We have been deliberating about tackling the Camino de Santiago de Compostella pilgrimage for a while now. There are many routes to the city of Compostella in north west Spain, where the apostle St James is said to be buried: the Plata or Silver route starts in Seville, the Norte or North route follows the Atlantic coast of Spain from the French border, the English route starts in A Coruna and there’s the Portuguese route, to name but a few. But the most popular is the Frances or French route which starts in the small French town of St Jean Pied de Port in the Pyrenees. This has been the pilgrims route since St James tomb was discovered in 813AD. Pilgrims usually travelled on foot, but some went on horseback, the distance of the Frances route is 500 miles or 800 kilometres. The scallop shell is the logo of all the routes.
So what have we been deliberating over?
We don’t want to walk it, we want to cycle it. And not just on any old bike, but on our electric bikes 🚴 🚴 So our main dilemma has been to consider how (un)comfortable we feel about doing a pilgrimage by ebike that most people do on foot, how can we square this with ourselves?
Well, if the alternative is not to do it at all, then surely doing it by ebike is a better option? At the moment we are both fit and healthy and doing a 500 mile ebike ride will hopefully help to keep us fit and healthy? Our distance will actually be 1,000 miles as we will be staying in our camper, cycling there and back to it each day. How will we feel cycling past other pilgrims who are walking? Well if we don’t do it we will never know. Most walkers stay in hostels or hotels along the way, at least we are catering for ourselves and planning our overnight stops.
So we’ve decided to give it a go, do a recce and hope to feel at ease on our e-steeds.
ST JEAN PIED DE PORT
This is the start, a beautiful French town in the Pyrenees a few miles from the Spanish border. We registered at the Pilgrims’ Office and got our first stamp in our Camino Passports; we will collect many stamps along The Way, at churches, campsites, shops and cafes, in exchange for recording our age, nationality, method and reason for ’doing’ the Camino. The optional tick boxes for reason include religion, spiritual, exercise, culture and health.
Our reason is for adventure and curiosity, to allow our senses to be free, to keep our ears and eyes open, our tastebuds titivated and to feel the sun, wind and rain touching our skin. But most of all to keep our hearts and minds open to new experiences …
