July 24, 2019 to July 26, 2019
Day 1-2++ Oviedo to Compostela
Renfe Operadora to the rescue or maybe not.
Downloaded a self guided Oviedo city tour of religious architecture. The origin story has two 8th century monks founding the city. To me the 14th and 15th century churches are the most interesting.
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I have to shorten the distance and time in the saddle to reach Santiago de Compostela in my allotted time. And still faithfully ride to Saint James with time and spirit to complete circling the old city and the cathedral. And of course turning El Rucio back to the bike rental folks in Santiago.
Speaking of which El Rucio had his first flat tire the morning. The problem most probably occurred yesterday but this morning when the concierge carried the bike up from the hotel basement the rear tire was dead flat with no apparent cause.
Due to errors forced and some unseen, learning to navigate the Caminos using Google maps because my guide book only showed walking routes resulted in many kilometers resulting in Uturns and generally straying way off the official Camiono. A young peregrina from France let me photocopy her spainish maps with basic bike alternatives and a spainish walking peregrino showed me an Android app bothering of which helped. An early version of the Buen Camino app must have been used by San Diego himself or perhaps the angels who floated his coffin from Palestine to northwestern coast of Spain.
All this and an over estimation of what legs were capable of on a fat knobby tired 29er has left me a few days short of completing my planned Camino. The Renfe Operadora (Spainish national rail service) to the rescue. I bought online train tickets to León from Oviedo only to find this train does not take bikes. The Oviedo train folks with some haulting English and my ancient Spanish sorted it all out. I catch the last train out of Dodge 9:00 PM (21:00) to León and then take the 7:20 AM to Ponferrada. This puts me a little over 200 K from Santiago with time for a hopefully more leisurely pace to complete my compostela. Getting the official stamp and seal of completion, for me, is secondary to experiencing the pilgrim's journey itself.
In short it's going to be a long day, night and morning on the trains and train stations.
My original intention was to ride the Camino del Norte from beginning to end. My missteps allowed me to ride, what many with experience to speak is the most beautiful sections of the del Norte, perhaps as much of the Primativo as I can physically handle and hopefully not be overwhelmed by the push of humanity on the Frances. Saint James the greater willing.
* ******
My heart goes out to the ancient pilgrims. It's a hard road to travel. I say this as a middle class American with a Visa card in my wallet. As I wrote above I decided to cut the distance by several days riding by taking the train inland to the Camino Frances and continue riding towards Santiago. The first train was canceled do to technical problems. I was told to take an alternative route and would be met by a bus which would take me to Leon to meet the train for the second leg. I got on the wrong train and took a long ride in the wrong direction. The engineer told me to sit tight for the return run to Oviedo. At mid night Orbitz found a discounted 4 star hotel to rest the old peregtino's body for a few hours.
The rail folks refunded my tickets and issued new ones the whole way to Santiago. (I feel I've used up my share of screwups, forced and ubforced.) Bit of a disappointment but I'm not the first not to finish the Camino on the first try. Several I've met along the way are in similar positions. So I have nearly 18 hours of trains and layovers to look forward to starting this evening.
Today's ride: 8 km (5 miles)
Total: 762 km (473 miles)
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