Camino By Bike - part 1
20th September 2019
"Your bike trip in October” I enquired, “do you mind if I tag along?"
Every September my father-in-law Martin and long time friend Alan saddle up their bikes, currently a Fireblade and GSX 750 respectively, and ride into Europe for a week of freedom, fast roads and fine wine. I’d wanted to take my Africa Twin onto the continent for a while and jumping on their trip seemed like the perfect opportunity. “Sure” replied Martin, always accommodating - though I think half in belief that I’d pull out - “I’ll check with Alan and you can tag along when we next meet up to plan.
Meeting up to plan involved sitting at a table in our local pub, having a few good ales, pouring over Alan’s old maps and generally finding the longest names for Martin to write down and later transfer to his SatNav. “I think we should get through France to Spain in one day”, “we can get from Santander to Santiago in one day surely?”, “Okay, if not Santiago then Oviedo at least”, “Porto to Santander in a day will be easy” were some of the ludicrous claims that come from a group of bikers looking at a 1:1,000,000 scale map over a couple of 6% beers. Eventually though a plan did come together. Alan had always wanted to see the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela and Martin really wanted to drink Port in Porto. So it was settled, we were going to ride the Camino!
The Camino is a network of routes each leading to Santiago de Compostela’s cathedral and the tomb of the Apostle Saint James. Pre-Christianity the route is said to have followed the line of the Milky Way to the end of the Earth on the Atlantic Coast. But following the beaching of a buried-at-sea Apostle by the name of James and his subsequent reburial by the then-king Alfonso II the pilgrims came flooding in. Nearly 278,000 pilgrims completed the pilgrimage in 2016 with most walking from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and following the Camino Frances.
We however would not be walking and instead would be travelling on our motorbikes. Alan on a Suzuki GSX 750 R, Martin on a Honda Fireblade and myself on a Honda Africa Twin. Our route would roughly follow the Camino del Norte, through the Basque regions with a quick detour around the Picos de Europa, to the Camino Primitivo, the original pilgrimage route, before turning southwards on the Camino Portugues Coastal, hugging the Atlantic coast on our way to Porto and it’s many Port distilleries.
The Camino is marked by a series of scallop shells, originally a sign of the completion as collected from the shores east of Santiago. Finding this trail around San Sebastian we sped along past Bilbao and Santander to the roads of Picos de Europa. Taking a quick detour from the Camino we circled the mountains weaving through passes of sheer grey rock imposing from one side juxtaposed with the green valley dropping away to the river on the other. The road crosses the river several times providing sweeping corners and sudden sharp bends. My Africa Twin proved more capable than ever at keeping pace with Martin on his Fireblade in-front and Alan and his Gixxer to the rear as we punctured the silence of the valley with the thrill of our three bikes. The front wheel of the Africa Twin tucked sweetly into the apex of downhill hairpins to give the edge in corners against the straight line power of the Fireblade and Gixxer. The DCT system taking care of the gearing allowed me to focus on the ride, the noise and the breathtaking views. I could have ridden those mountains and valleys all week, but the Camino advances on and so must we - so on to Santiago we rode.