the backwards caministas

OBEY

these people are looking for the pirate ship from "The Goonies". Chunk is in the middle.

here is "the riddle of steel" pondering the riddle of where the hell is the campground. crom's beard!

We are back to the hellhole vampire city after two fabulous weeks of vacation. And the best part is that we still have two weeks of vacation in Italy coming up next month. The northwest is my new favorite part of Spain, although the cities are underwhelming (hard to beat Barcelona), the general attitude of people and the rural surroundings really take the cake.

I am sort of running a half-assed cycling blog here, with the hopes that it will one day be useful to touring cyclists. So far none have ever left a comment....but just in case they are out there I should go into a little advice about getting around with your bike on the train. This ain't Amsterdam, ace. Spain is lagging behind Europe in making its trains bike-compatible

Do to outlandish luck, and a successful hapless dumb foreigner act (we are good at this because we are in fact hapless dumb foreigners) we arrived in Santiago de Compostela from Madrid with our bikes, on an overnight sleeper train. I really made an effort to find out under which circumstances you can bring a bike, and under which you cannot. The information is not made available easily and when you get the information it is totally ambiguous. so its a crap shoot. Generally speaking you cannot bring a bike on a national train (meaning a long distance train usually with only a few stops). The exception seems to be if you have paid the high price for a family sleeper cabin. Even then you are limited to 4 bikes per cabin, though even as a bike enthusiast i have trouble seeing where the bikes would be stowed. They are supposed to be dismanteled, although really they only require removal of wheels and pedals, and supposed to be bagged but apparently wrapping in plastic is sufficient. We had bought tourist class beds which are 4 to a cabin, unisex and with strangers. So at the platform with 10 minutes to spare we had to rip the bikes and gear apart, squeeze through cavernous hallways to our separate cabins and appease our roomies about our bikes taking up the whole cabin. We had only 10 minutes to spare because despite arriving 45 minutes early, we had to wait for the platform number to come up onto the board only 15 minutes before departure. Then a horde of people who had actually arrived later than us beat us to the line to the escalator, then we got turned away from the escalator and told to use the very slow and busy elevator. I had it easier than becky, because her cabin was full of old women who brought such large bags that they could not lift them into the overhead storage and thus consumed the only logical place for a bike frame (on end, fork stuffed into the closet), So we actually put the bike frame precariously overhead. Most of the ladies were satisfied, but one kept bitching that it was dangerous. it was really her fault that there was no place else for the bike to go....but we were totally bending the rules to the breaking point, so we had to try and make everyone happy. My cabin had one guy, so i had time to help becky, and stow my stuff without creating a major ruckus although i felt like i was creating a major ruckus. However, even after finishing I was so stressed I couldn't sleep for hours.THIS IS THE WRONG WAY. HERE'S WHAT TO DO INSTEAD: If you want to travel on a nice efficient national train you must do so on one with sleeper cars like ours, these are called trenhotel. But shell out the bucks to buy the cama familial. Otherwise you need to string together multiple regional trains or media distancia trains which are much better able to accommodate bikes. When you search the RENFE (spanish national train company) website, many regional trains will not come up. So you have to be clever, and chop your trip into segments, and search based on these until some regional train options pop up. On our way home yesterday we took a regional train from Oviedo to Leon. This was exactly like the commuter trains in the cities. With a little bungee magic I was able to secure my bike vertically to some rails so that it did not block any exits and i could be free to take a comfortable seat and read. The stretch from Leon to Madrid was a regional express, which had an entire care empty in the back with d-rings for securing bikes and wheelchairs. We also saw a media-distancia train with a specila handicap/bicycle car. it took 9 hours mind you, but it was so much better than the stress from the trip to Galicia, and it only cost 35 euros each, and no bike disassembly.

Ok, heres what we did: We stayed a night in Santiago de Compostela. So heres the deal about this town. A long long time ago, someone found some bones in the future site of the cathedral. Due to some miracle revelation and the stamp of approval by some bishop, these bones were somehow pronounced the remains of St. James the apostle of Jesus, a man who was excuted in Jerusalem. How did he get to Galicia, well that link involves a holy unmanned boat, and the miraculous enclosing of the remains in stone. No flying spaghetti monster, however. Why noone questions the obvious truth...that someone elses bones were found...is a matter of religion. My god has meatballs and thousands of noodley tentacles. Why James? I don't know, there were 11 other apostles after all. I guess you've got to rule out Judas, and Peter was already taken in Rome, and Thomas was a doubter of Jesus's zombie skills, and John was kind of an asskisser. Whos left...Sneezy, Dopey, and oh yeah St. James. So anyway, since the pope bought all this it became truth, and for centuries religious pilgrims have poured to the cathedral site from all over Europe.There are numerous pilgrimage routes culminating on the cathedral. Anyways, its a nice city and a nice cathedral well worth visiting. It is third in importance only to Jerusalem and Rome for catholics, though I reckon most American catholics don't know much about this.

We rode out of there on a hilly inland route towards a Coruna. It was really confusing because 70% of the towns are so small they don't appear on the map, towns have multiple names (Spanish and Gallego, yep Galicia has its own language) and the road numbering system appeared to be different from our map. But we made it. The really small roads are nice for their lack of traffic, but if you tend to worry about where the hell you are I'd suggest sticking to the secondary highways. A Coruna really pissed us off because it turned out to be a a big city we could not escape. Our escape route spontaneosly turned into a full-bore freeway, and we decided to get the F out on the train to Ferrol. I will say that the beaches at A Coruna were very nice, otherwise we didn't give this place a second look.

The short train ride went around the bay through awesome little houses and farms. In Ferrol, we stayed with John, an affable former roomate of Becky's. He is some form of naval engineer who works at the ship yard, and gets a monthly stipend (in addition ot his salary) for living expenses. His stipend is 50% more than my salary. He gave us a bar tour of Ferrol and showed us a couple absolutely perfect and almost empty beaches. All of the Medditerranean is currently writhing with human flesh, but these far superior beaches are empty! Somehow, despite barely speaking Spanish, he knows how to get every barman to bring out a secret stash of liquor concoction for free. One guy had replicated Bailey's perfectly, and another guy had found a way to recreate the gummy coke bottle candies as a drink. I also managed to learn what a kite suit is and actually witness kite surfing, and get shitfaced which is one of John's specialties.

Aftre this break, we started our ride for real, taking the western coastal highway, then an overland route to the north coast. Up to this point we were having trouble finding places to camp. But as of the town of Viveiro the character of our tour changed a bit. Here is is possible to go on a beach bum bike tour. You can ride in the morning, early afternoon, and arrive to ste up camp with plenty of time to go to the beach and have a swim. The water is cold usually, but it only takes a few minutes to get used to. My favorite was in between Foz and Ribideo, where awesome waves were crashing into a tiny beautiful beach around sunset. Although I previously had an aversion to developed campgrounds, a hot shower is key in this circumstance. If you had warm weather you could repeat this cycle for at least a week...ride a bit, hang out at the beach, ride a bit, hang out at the beach. Shortly to the south was As Catedrais, which at low tide features all sorts of water sculpted arches, passage ways in the rocks. As with a lot of places that are cool, its popular, so you have to put up with hordes of humanity. But definitely worth a stop.

Shortly after Ribideo, we entered Asturias, and the first thing we saw was an Asturian bagpipe and drum band. This is also where we started following the northernmost pilgrimage route backwards. it was funny watching the look on pilgrim faces wondering who was going the wrong way, us or them? Luarca is a notable town along here, a it sits in a canyon with a small harbor with a light house. The view from the light house featured the distant green hills so typical of Asturias (and the labels of Asturian dairy products, this is happy cow country), a nice beach, and efficiently stacked town built on the canyon walls which reminded me of an old world Bisbee, except for the aforementioned oceanic business. We camped on the cliffs overlooking the ocean, unfortunately there was no super easy beach access that night, but it was awesome. Finally we made our way to Cudillero, a foggy harbor town, also incredibly steeply built on cliffs. Then we spent one night in Oviedo. We decided we wanted to finally go get shithoused at a sidreria on our last night in Asturias. We passed up an expensive looking one in the tourist district, and then literally the next 5 or so were closed. Considering that we were in the biggest town of Asturias which is famous for its cider throwing bars, this is absurd.... and I guess I already said how we got home. Luckily it won't be long before I get out of this city again.