September 4, 2013
San Sebastian: A real challenge and a change of plans
I slept very little last night as I felt terrified with what was in store for the morning. Those of you who are somewhat younger than me and fitter on less laden bikes would have had no concerns at all but I am a whimp. Although the distance is not huge the road to San Sebastian involves a 500 metre climb over the pass on Mount Jaizkibel and the guide rates it as 5 in a 1-5 score of difficulty. I also read that there is a famous bike race over it each year and this was born out by the famous names we saw spray painted on it.
I was able to eat very little breakfast and we set off at 8am. It was easy to find the way as the lovely young woman in the tourist information had given us detailed instructions. We stared on the mountain, it was beautiful, a perfect road with virtually no traffic at all and the gradients although steep were not too bad as they hair pinned upwards. On and on we went I was feeling pleased with myself then round the corner we came and there were masses of people at a church. This was the the Santuario de Guadalupe. But why all the people, they were spilling out of the church, thankfully they must have come up the road earlier. I had a huge feeling of euthoria, I had made it and I hadn’t walked a step. There was a lovely rotund priest who reminded me of Ross Brown both in appearance and personality. He stamped our credentials and then told us that when Hondarribia (town at the bottomof the hill) was besieged in 1638 and the Virgin of Guadalupe had protected the town for 69 days. This is commemorated every year on 8th September and a mass is held there twice a day for the 4 days either side of it. The attendance is enormous, the haven’t forgotten the Virgin, they even had men directing traffic in Basque hats.
I changed up in my gears and sped down the hill for around 200m but then my euthoria disappeared we went up again. It was here that the real climbing started. We were having to zigzag up the road in our lowest gears and when I wobbled off the edge it was impossible to get started again. Ken walks so much faster than me that he was very kind, would push his bike on then come back and get mine so I spent some of the time walking with no load. On and on we went, we were now above the bush line and there were curly horned cattle and sheep grazing. They like us had fantastic views over the Atlantic as did the Tourist bus that pulled in just before the summit at the special viewing place. We did get riding again and then the wonderful site of the sign saying we were at the pass. We celebrated with a drink of water and were back to sea level in what seemed a very short time,
At the bottom of Jaizkibel you come to Pasai de San Juan. This has a considerable harbour which you need to cross. Luckily I knew there was a tiny ferry across it, we just had to find it. Pilgrims began to appear from the walking route so it was easy to just follow them. Getting on the tiny boat was not so easy. There was an impossibly steep ladder to the landing then the bikes had to be completely unloaded and then lifted on. With a lot of good humoured help everything was on board and we made the very short journey to the other side, loaded up and set off over yet another hill to San Sebastian. The Tourist Information found us a room. This is a pension, we did mention that we had 2 bikes and they said that was fine. What they didn’t say was that the bikes had to be with us in our room which is on the second floor up two flights of a narrow winding staircase.
The concensus is that this route is too hard for me in particular and we will find it very difficult to meet our deadline in Portugal. Probably more importantly we do not have sufficient information to make route finding anything but a nightmare, The pilgrim route is not much help here as so much of it is on tracks so reluctantly we have pulled the plug on this route. Instead we are catching a train to Burgos tomorrow and will ride to Santiago on the Camino Frances (the Camino that we walked 5 or so years ago). We found a bookshop and managed to get a guide to cycling it and also large scale Michellin Maps of it so all will be a lot easier. We are both a bit disappointed but it is good to be sensible in your old age.
Today's ride: 30 km (19 miles)
Total: 2,185 km (1,357 miles)
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