When we call that route in northern Spain "The Way", it takes on some special metaphorical meaning. It seems to imply a direction to take in life. Certainly lots of books talk about this travel option as having a parallel spiritual journey. And with such journeys we are used to having guidebooks, usually deemed Holy Books, and a whole staff of priests or Popes or Lamas to show the one and only way.

But so far, in reality, The Way looks more like a "camino". An camino in Spanish can mean just a road. And the word reminds us of the French, "camion", a truck. Why is "the way" looking not so special just now? It turns out that rather than it being a shining path marked out with certainty straight to Santiago, it can actually be any one of a zillion roads. In the previous page we showed three competing "ways" of doing the so called Camino Frances. But actually even the Frances is just one of at least eight caminos in or close to Spain:

Camino Francés (French Way)
Camino de Finisterre & Muxia
Camino Aragones
Le Puy Route
Camí de Sant Jaume
Camino de Madrid
Camino Ingles
Camino Primitivo
Camino Portugués
Tunnel Route
Via de la Plata
Camino del Salvador
Camino del Norte (Northern Way)

Ok, maybe it's part of the "thing" that all roads lead to Santiago. Probably what is actually gacking us (thanks for the word, Violet) right now is just how many routes or roads there are within these "ways". As we showed in the map on the previous page, many ways are offered by different companies or sources to skin this cat. We are just now coming off of four days of trying to figure out the del Norte. So frustrating has been all the different opinions that now we are saying we won't do it. - Take a train from Santiago, jumping to our next sane route segment, the Velodyssee up the Atlantic coast.

We'll see, though we hate abandoning any plan. Meanwhile for your entertainment (but now, certainly not ours) here is a view of two opinions about how to cycle the del Norte:

Maybe the lesson in all this is still spiritual - there is not a single path for making your way, in life, to/from Santiago, or otherwise.

Or in short, that quote from Yogi Berra: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it”

Appendix: Bikeline

The Bikeline guides, published by the Esterbauer company are the gold standard for European (mainly) cycle guides. Almost always the Esterbauer routes follow one or usually more official European, national, or regional routes and you can expect to see signage from these routes actually out on the street corners.

So we found it strange that the Bikeline route for the Camino differed from the "official" Eurovelo 3 version. It opened a question we have often asked ourselves - which values are bike route planners shooting for? Will they go up a mountain to avoid traffic? Will they detour to pass an historic site, and do they work to avoid going through towns, shooting past services and shrines, or do they go into downtown and past the bakery?

So we wrote to Esterbauer and asked them - why the discrepancies with EV3? Their answer was stoically German, but off the mark. They said they are on the fifth edition of Jakobs Radweg, and that they first came out before EV3. So they have adjusted to more match EV3, and maybe we have an earlier Bikeline book.

Nice try - no cigar. We used only the latest online tracks from both sources for our comparison. So we are still left wondering - what are all these folks thinking when they take this fork in the road and leave that one?