MountainMiMi
New Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- 10/2024
Hi all! First time, just wanted to post about my recent Camino experience doing a hybrid trip with biking AND walking. Essentially had a limited amount of time off from work, and wanted to do the entire Camino Portuguese from Porto to Santiago, but had only 8 days, and did not want to walk 20+ miles a day. So we opted for this (distances were what we did, including if we got a bit lost and backtracked)
Day 1, bike: Porto to Esposende (40mi)
Day 2, bike: Esposende to Caminha (34mi - got lost a bit this day, so added probably 2-3 miles to typical route)
Day 3, bike: Caminha to Vigo (ferried bikes across Minho river) (44mi)
Day 4, walk: Vigo to just past Redondela (13mi)
Day 5, walk: Redondela to Pontevedra (11mi)
Day 6, walk: Pontevedra to Calda de Reis (13mi)
Day 7, walk: Calda de Reis to Padron (12mi)
Day 8, walk: Padron to Santiago (15mi)
Bike storage:
We used one of the popular cycling rental companies for the area, which stipulate that the first and last hotel must be willing to accept bikes for delivery/pick-up, and hotels in between need indoor storage for bikes. We had seamless experiences with
Porto: Axis Porto Club (bikes were delivered here for us to pick up)
Esposende: Suave Mar Hotel (indoor garage to store bikes, but no interior pillar/rack to lock them too, so we just locked our two bikes to each other)
Caminha: Hotel Porta do Sol (indoor garage with bike rack to lock to)
Vigo: AC Hotel Palacio (store bikes in interior conference room for courier to pick up)
Routing:
We did the coastal route to the best of our ability. We relied heavily on Strava using the heat-map function to see where other people cycled, and occasionally used Google Maps. This only led us astray a couple times on days 1 and 2, with portions of stairs on the boardwalk (in the Reserva Ornitologica de Mindelo), and too much cobblestone back roads for my taste, ha! My brain felt like it was going to jiggle out of my skull. Also, just past Vila Cha a section of boardwalk is missing/under construction, and required us to hoist bikes to ground and back to boardwalk again, which would have been challenging for one person to do alone. The section in Vila Praia de Ancora at sunset was by far the most beautiful part of our trip. And the 'yellow brick road' (not actually brick, just pavement, but I liked calling it that) once we crossed over into Spain was such a blessing on day 3, being well paved and protected.
Leaving Porto:
Honestly, the roadcycling there was slightly harrowing. We did most of the route from hotel to the river with a group of local day cyclists, and almost got hit by a car who ran a red light in the first 3 minutes of our ride. It was a bit stressful, but once we got to the river, it was very straightforward. We opted to walk from our hotel to the Cathedral Se in the morning to get our stamp, then walked back to the hotel and got on our bikes. We did this because we checked out the route from the Cathedral to the river the day prior, and did not want to carry our bike down all those stairs. The woman at the tourism office actually suggested this plan to us and we wholeheartedly agreed.
Packing:
We were provided two 20L panniers which BARELY fit my empty 35L pack with internal frame, but easily fit all our gear otherwise. I wish I either had a smaller pack, or perhaps a frameless one to better fit in the panniers. However, we lucked out and never had rain, so only being able to fold that pannier over once wasn't a big deal. We wore one set of cycling shorts for the full three days, and cycled using our hiking/walking shoes to minimize equipment only used for one activity. Did laundry day 4 so we didn't have to carry stinky cycling shorts the whole time. The helmets were provided with the rentals, so we were able to hike without carrying helmets. We obviously chose raincoat/rain pants over ponchos, because cycling with a poncho if it had rained would have been risking getting it caught in the gears/wheels. We did each bring a leg strap to use with our rain pants, but since we got lucky with the weather we never had to use it. Also, we got an extremely late start one day because of food poisoning the night before, and ended up cycling a short section in the dark and were SO GLAD we had headlamps, since the rental bikes did not have front lights, only red rear ones.
Soreness:
It was actually nice to break up the soreness from biking and transition to soreness with walking, ha! It was our first time bike packing, and our behinds were fairly sore by day 3. But fresh feet for the first day of walking was quite nice. We noticed that we sweat much more with walking, because we didn't have the air rushing by to cool us down. We actually were overall more sore with walking as well, likely because we had more elevation in the last 100km, and because we were carrying our packs.
Compostela:
There was absolutely no issues whatsoever that we did a hybrid route, as we walked the final 100km from Vigo (and biked ~170km). The lady in the pilgrim's office was very nice and had no additional questions when we explained how we did our Camino.
Hope this helps someone who is considering doing a hybrid Camino. Buen camino/Bom caminho everyone!
Day 1, bike: Porto to Esposende (40mi)
Day 2, bike: Esposende to Caminha (34mi - got lost a bit this day, so added probably 2-3 miles to typical route)
Day 3, bike: Caminha to Vigo (ferried bikes across Minho river) (44mi)
Day 4, walk: Vigo to just past Redondela (13mi)
Day 5, walk: Redondela to Pontevedra (11mi)
Day 6, walk: Pontevedra to Calda de Reis (13mi)
Day 7, walk: Calda de Reis to Padron (12mi)
Day 8, walk: Padron to Santiago (15mi)
Bike storage:
We used one of the popular cycling rental companies for the area, which stipulate that the first and last hotel must be willing to accept bikes for delivery/pick-up, and hotels in between need indoor storage for bikes. We had seamless experiences with
Porto: Axis Porto Club (bikes were delivered here for us to pick up)
Esposende: Suave Mar Hotel (indoor garage to store bikes, but no interior pillar/rack to lock them too, so we just locked our two bikes to each other)
Caminha: Hotel Porta do Sol (indoor garage with bike rack to lock to)
Vigo: AC Hotel Palacio (store bikes in interior conference room for courier to pick up)
Routing:
We did the coastal route to the best of our ability. We relied heavily on Strava using the heat-map function to see where other people cycled, and occasionally used Google Maps. This only led us astray a couple times on days 1 and 2, with portions of stairs on the boardwalk (in the Reserva Ornitologica de Mindelo), and too much cobblestone back roads for my taste, ha! My brain felt like it was going to jiggle out of my skull. Also, just past Vila Cha a section of boardwalk is missing/under construction, and required us to hoist bikes to ground and back to boardwalk again, which would have been challenging for one person to do alone. The section in Vila Praia de Ancora at sunset was by far the most beautiful part of our trip. And the 'yellow brick road' (not actually brick, just pavement, but I liked calling it that) once we crossed over into Spain was such a blessing on day 3, being well paved and protected.
Leaving Porto:
Honestly, the roadcycling there was slightly harrowing. We did most of the route from hotel to the river with a group of local day cyclists, and almost got hit by a car who ran a red light in the first 3 minutes of our ride. It was a bit stressful, but once we got to the river, it was very straightforward. We opted to walk from our hotel to the Cathedral Se in the morning to get our stamp, then walked back to the hotel and got on our bikes. We did this because we checked out the route from the Cathedral to the river the day prior, and did not want to carry our bike down all those stairs. The woman at the tourism office actually suggested this plan to us and we wholeheartedly agreed.
Packing:
We were provided two 20L panniers which BARELY fit my empty 35L pack with internal frame, but easily fit all our gear otherwise. I wish I either had a smaller pack, or perhaps a frameless one to better fit in the panniers. However, we lucked out and never had rain, so only being able to fold that pannier over once wasn't a big deal. We wore one set of cycling shorts for the full three days, and cycled using our hiking/walking shoes to minimize equipment only used for one activity. Did laundry day 4 so we didn't have to carry stinky cycling shorts the whole time. The helmets were provided with the rentals, so we were able to hike without carrying helmets. We obviously chose raincoat/rain pants over ponchos, because cycling with a poncho if it had rained would have been risking getting it caught in the gears/wheels. We did each bring a leg strap to use with our rain pants, but since we got lucky with the weather we never had to use it. Also, we got an extremely late start one day because of food poisoning the night before, and ended up cycling a short section in the dark and were SO GLAD we had headlamps, since the rental bikes did not have front lights, only red rear ones.
Soreness:
It was actually nice to break up the soreness from biking and transition to soreness with walking, ha! It was our first time bike packing, and our behinds were fairly sore by day 3. But fresh feet for the first day of walking was quite nice. We noticed that we sweat much more with walking, because we didn't have the air rushing by to cool us down. We actually were overall more sore with walking as well, likely because we had more elevation in the last 100km, and because we were carrying our packs.
Compostela:
There was absolutely no issues whatsoever that we did a hybrid route, as we walked the final 100km from Vigo (and biked ~170km). The lady in the pilgrim's office was very nice and had no additional questions when we explained how we did our Camino.
Hope this helps someone who is considering doing a hybrid Camino. Buen camino/Bom caminho everyone!
