Santiago and Camino wrap-up

Well I’ve been back for two weeks now, so I thought it would be a good time to do my wrap ups of the tour. I’ve been pretty slack though. I only just unpacked and cleaned my bike.

The final day of riding was quite straightforward on paper, so we upped the ante by trying to find a Celtic fort. We found the picnic area, and we found a wall. I guess that was a win? We eventually got into Santiago around early afternoon. It was extremely hot and we ended up having to walk up the final hill.

Can you see it?

Santiago was a bit of a disappointment. You queue for an age to get your final stamp and collect your Compostella and then the rest of the city is basically a giant gift shop. Accommodation is a pain and probably something we should have sorted out earlier. We were sat in a cafe calling hostels when the cafe owner offered us a recommendation of the woman in the fruit shop next door. She was full, but she gave us another recommendation for this very strange pensión. We stayed there for a couple of days while we explored the town, cleaned and packaged up our bikes.

My original plan for the trip was to acquire an old bike box when I reached Santiago. It turns out that a lot of cyclists arrive in Santiago, apparently via the French way (which even has bike-specific signage) and so there’s no such thing as a free box in Santiago. I bought one for €12.

It turned out that buying a box was a huge mistake when it came to getting my bike onto the train. They insisted the bike could not go in a box and instead had to be wrapped in plastic wrap, costing me €15 and the box. Ironically to end up with something that was larger than it had been in the box and still didn’t fit on the train. I ended up on a 6h train journey with my bike on my lap and the chain rings digging into me.

In retrospect it would have been better to use one of those €40 services that deliver a bike anywhere in Spain.

Wrapping Up

We rode 578km in 13 days, which is on average 44km per day.

We climbed a cumulative 9375m.

There’s some pretty steep gradients in there but I haven’t worked out exactly how steep yet. There’s surprisingly few tools that will take in a GPX file from my GPS and point out all the interesting climbs to me. Maybe I should load it into Strava.

In terms of wear and tear on my gear I’m due for a new chain and cassette (but I was nearly due anyway) and new front cones (they’ve got a very deep groove in them). Plus the two tubes and brake pads I used on the road it should come to around $85 in parts. I probably should have ridden through less mud, but a lot of this is just me doing a proper service after coming back and seeing all the wear and tear that’s happened since I last serviced my hubs.

I’ve been feeling good since I came back. Like I did something personally challenging and overcame it and I’m stronger for it. I got a bit distracted comparing my achievement to other people’s, but a conversation I had made me realise that it’s my personal achievement and that there’s no point comparing it.

It’s freezing cold and quite wet, so I’ve immediately dropped from riding 45km a day to riding 24km every second day or so, but once I have my all-weather darling back on the road it’ll be easier to manage this weather.