It’s Official

Bought tickets to Madrid today. Now to figure out all the other stuff… Here’s a good diary of a walking trip along the Camino. I called UPS, FedEx, and DHL about shipping the bike. Their prices are highway robbery and taking my bike via Delta seems like a huge pain, mostly because of either storing the bike box or finding a replacement card box to bring the bike back. So it looks like renting is the way to go. I got a quote from one place and the price is reasonable. There’s still a lot of route planning to do too.

Also the commenter below linked to a great site: http://camino.xacobeo.es/en. Cool map. That site recommends I take the French route, the Northern route or the Primitive route given the time of year I’m going and the number of days I have. There was no place to enter that I was going by bike though…

The road from Rabanal climbs to the highest point of the journey, as well as one of the Camino’s most famous locations, the Cruz de Ferro. The Cruz de Ferro is an iron cross (hence its name) at the top of an enormous wooden pole. What makes it famous is the tradition of bringing a stone from your home to leave at the base of the cross. Must remember this!

Another good site.

“As far as fitness goes, 50 miles a day if you have all day to do it is not that tough. It will wear you down, however. You should work your way up to ~150 miles a week comfortably. This will get your rear in shape as well as getting used to riding a bunch. You should throw in a 50-60 mile (4-5 hour) ride once a week.”

This list of routes makes it all the more difficult to decide.