Santiago di Compostella – Vigo
130.1km, 10hrs 3mins, 2078m total
climb
So we set off on
the final section of what is considered the Pilgrim's route, leaving
Santiago and heading towards the sea. There are various routes that
you can take, and final points to meet the sea. We were headed to
Vigo as that was in the right direction for us. We saw the
Compostella signs along the way. It was a clear and hot day (over 20
degrees) but very windy as we have come to expect.
Then it went a bit
wrong route-wise.
The first mistake
was made coming off the big road we were following at a roundabout. I
followed the straight ahead but the actual road was a
counter-intuitive left turn. I noticed after about 2km further on but
decided to keep going as the detour took us closer to the sea, and we
would stay on smaller roads anyway. What you can't tell from the map
is that meant making a rather large and steep climb, with the
Atlantic wind blowing our hair off all the way up and down. At the
top, Johanna admitted she was also not feeling too great that day, a
mix of a slight cold with a bit of nausea, and was not in the mood
for any more detours. We got to the big blue area on the map and it
was nice to see the sea after 2 months inland, albeit not exactly
Caribbean-spec coastline at this point. The next bits of the route were also quite hilly as it tuned out, as we found our way through the smaller roads. Some bits were quite nice, shaded Eucalyptus forests that we hadn’t seen up until now. Strong smell, good for Johanna's cold maybe ;)
The second mistake
was that the GPS route had been plotted for driving, and not avoiding
motorways. Software glitch. So I had to navigate the best I could
following other roads. Not too bad, but the main problem was that
just before the 100km-ish destination we had to cross an estuary, and
the huge bridge that carried the motorway was the only option. I
could see it was a motorway on the GPS, but assumed that it must also
have a pedestrian access as it was the only bridge. When we got close
to it (on an A-road), the next roundabout had no options other than
motorway and signs for no cycles on the slip road up to the bridge.
Swear words. Johanna not pleased even more now. We thought about the
options – we could chance our luck over the bridge, or go all the
way back up to the beginning of the estuary and around to the other
side. It was so annoying to see the other side where the
accommodation was only another 5km or so, and knowing that it would
take us 20km or more to get there. Of course we couldn't cross the
bridge for safety's sake but we just did not understand how they
could have such a huge bridge with no pedestrian walkway. So we
started the long ride back around. We passed the bridge again after a
couple more hours in the heat. Stressful. Johanna did well with a
headache like that.
Then the worst
bit. As we were almost at the end of the route, we were passing
through the port area of Vigo, on a busy A-road. We went under an
unavoidable 300m tunnel and on the other side there was a roundabout
so I stopped to wait for Johanna. She didn't appear. I walked back to
the tunnel entrance and couldn’t see her. Some cars were beeping at
me and gesturing something but I had no idea what they were trying to
say. I couldn’t go back into the one-way busy two lane tunnel so I
waited. Tried phoning Johanna but she didn’t answer her phone. Then
one car slowed down and I could see the woman passenger doing a
pushing-a-bike impression. So I decided to risk it and cycled back
into the tunnel the wrong way against the cars (and ignored the
friendly advice from them to turn around). Johanna was about
two-thirds of the way through the tunnel pushing her bike. She didn’t
know why but it had jammed or something. She had shouted on me and
rung her bell but I didn't hear it.
I had a look and
the chain had actually got wedged in between the first and second
sprockets on the front crank, in a loop. Never seen that before. So
we pushed both the bikes out of the tunnel (luckily in the actual
tunnel one lane was closed and coned off so it was safe to do that).
On the sunny side I tried to free the chain but it was no good and I
was covered in oil so just gave up and pushed to the end of the
route, which was only about 1km away. Tempers were very frayed at
this point.
We got to the end
point and found the last problem with the route. It didn’t take us
directly to the hotel, but just down to the harbour. God only knows
what happened, some old version of the route was saved over the new
one or something. Anyway, we had to find WiFi and then google the
hotel again. Portuguese addresses don’t work on the sat nav so used
coordinates instead. Cue another big climb up through the town to get
to our Pension for the night.
It was a nice
place though. Had to carry the bikes up to the room which is always a
pain in small tight stairs and corridors. Balcony overlooking a busy
side street. We googled the best place to eat in Vigo, and found it
but it was closed for some reason so we just tried the next tapas
place on the way back to the Pension which was also good. I
deliberately forgot about the problem with Johanna's bike for now, it
was Sunday anyway.
We had decided to
book a mini-holiday to celebrate our arrival at the ocean, and
completion of the Santiago de Compstella. There are two small island
groups just off the coast of Vigo, the one we were going to was
called Islas Cies, and was voted best beach in the world 2007 by the
Guardian. We had booked the camping online for 2 nights and the ferry
tickets. Only our second other mode of transport since we left Prague
(last was a bus to the town centre in Lindau).
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| Mmmm, Vaporub. |
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