Had one of the nicest talks with the lady who works as an assistant at the hostel the night before. She’s fairly young, and works actually as a flight attendant while living in Majorca. Once a year though she comes to this little hamlet tucked into the mountains of a corner of Spain to work for a month in solitude. It’s her way of cleansing from excess, an
d get back into touch with yourself. Hey, sounds pretty cool to me. Some people do yoga, other smoke potent stuff, and she does the hard work in a corner of Spain.I set out while it was still dark. At the real Vega de Valcarce (just a km onwards) I had breakfast, and then it was onto the road again. It was a steady climb up all morning. Relentless. The gradient wasn’t unbearable, but it just didn’t let go. I’ve read that some cyclists really struggled up on O’Cebreiro, so I was fairly nervous. At times when it got really steep, I geared down to my second biggest gear at the back, but all the while saving the granny gear for when the really steep sections would arrive.
Well, it never came. Or at least not the sort of gradient that I feared. Eventually I reached a crossroads, Pedrefita do Cebreiro, high up in the mountain. There’s a big and impressive statue of a pilgrim struggling in the wind. I paused a while, turned onto the LU634 and pushed on. Up again.
The final stretch wasn’t nearly as steep as I expected it to be. Just a couple of long hills, and then you’re at the top. It was weekend so there was a big, informal market going on. It was very crowded and busy, stalls everywhere and people milling about. To wind your way through all the people and stalls and still keep on the right route (you have to turn right somewhere, but I missed it initially) was a bit hectic.
From Cebreiro the road climbs slightly to El Poyo, where another big statue of a pilgrim awaits you. And then it’s downhill again. A huge downhill, nearly 15 km’s all the way to Triacastela. I stopped there to buy a coffee at a roadside café, and whilst relaxing saw a young Spanish guy and his girlfriend – which I saw earlier this morning on the long climb – rolling past. They shouted something to me, but I couldn’t hear nor understand their Spanish.
The road from Triacastela to Samos (LU633) and then Saria (LU633) is clearly in Galicia. You go either up or down, there’s no flat sections anymore. And it’s green and lush. The initial plan was to stop at Saria, but during a short lunch at a streetside café in the village I thought that I still felt pretty good, and that it would be fine to make some extra km’s to Santiago. The Spanish guy and girl whizzed past again (I overtook them earlier, the girl cycling a bit slower), and this time I could see the guy gesturing that I was again drinking coffee at a café. We all laughed, and they went on.
Back on the road I made the mistake of not buying anything to drink as I cycled out of Saria onto the C535. It was hot and the road was much tougher than I thought, steep hills all the way. My water was finished and as luck would have it, there was suddenly no shop to be seen. Well, lucky for me, just as I got thirstier with the effort, a small roadside café appeared, and I gulped a litre of water down.
Then I reached Portomarin, a fairly biggish town next to a dam. The refugio was full, and they wouldn’t accept any bikers tonight. Bummer. Portomarin only had expensive hotels, it seemed, so I had to book myself a thirty Euro room at one of the hotels. This is one of the other features of the Camino. As you get closer to Santiago, the Camino actually gets busier with pilgrims. This is because, in order to get your credencial signed to show that you’ve successfully completed the Camino, you officially only have to walk the last 100 km’s of the route, or cycle the last 200 km’s. To get the credencial, you don’t have to complete the whole 800 km’s starting in St Jean. Therefor a lot of people only complete this last section, making the last part of the Camino (and the refugio’s) very busy.
Obviously it’s their choice if they only want to do the final 100 km and not the whole 800 km, but I do think that to walk just the last bit in order to get a stamp, is rather meaningless and missing the point. The Camino is about learning about yourself whilst in solitude and sometimes even distress. Just pitching up for a short walk and get your credencial stamped, is like buying a drivers licence over the internet.
Time on bike: 5:23
Average speed: 17,1 km/h
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