I had breakfast with the Irish couple before going out into the rain which had not ceased falling since yesterday. Despite the rain there was a good mood on the bike knowing that Santiago was only 40kms down the road. With rain low clouds and mist there was verly little to see on the road so I kept my head down found a comfortable rhythm on the pedals and pushed for Santiago. I passed through the last few towns without really noticing them. Over the last 10kms into the city the camino passed along a series of minor roads and country lanes free of traffic. I passed by a number of walkers and stopped to say hello to the German lad who had stayed in the dorm in Arzua on Saturday night. We chatted for a couple of kilometres. The guy works as a mechanical engineer and builds custom made motorbikes in his spare time. He spent a number of years living in America and was pretty scathing of the attitudes of the average American. We were joined briefly by a Belgian couple who have walked the Camino from their Belgian home. I was afraid to ask how long they were on the road in case it reflected badly on my own rate of progress.
After a couple of kms I'd had enough of walking and decided to get back on the bike. We had passed through a number of rough backlanes but were now back on a smooth road surface. As I remounted the bike and wished the guy all the best for the last few kms he asked if I would like to share a room with him. Yikes! One of those really awkward silent moment followed before I replied 'No thanks', I was intent on staying in the main refugio in town. We'd already commented on the possibility of accomodation in the town and I'd already told him my plans so I didn't know what to make of that request. I didn't wait to find out either as I high-tailed it up the road.
Thirty minutes later I crested a ridge and caught my first sight of the city. It was a great feeling entering the suburbs, a genuine sense of arrival. I followed signs for the centre and wheeled the bike slowly through the 'puerto del Camino' into the old medieval quarter and followed the narrow twisting streets to the wide open space of the 'Praza do Obradoiro' over which the majestic Cathedral del Apostal presides. I spent a short while gazing at its richly ornamented facade and the sights of this monumental square catching my breath looking back to my departure from Chartres and savouring the satisfaction of completing another stage of this trek. Ideally I would have gone inside the Cathedral to formally complete the Camino trek but with a fully packed bike this was not possible. I took a wander through the closely crowded streets looking for a sign of a refugio and ended up at the tourist office where I was given directions to a local youth hostel as the local municipal refugio had closed for the season.
The hostel was only a 10 minute walk from the tourist office. Twenty minutes later I had been checked in by the cheerful owner of the place, had stored my bike, showered and was blissfully asleep in the 6-bed dorm to which I had been allocated. I slept for a couple of hours until I was awoken by a Japanese backpacker who was being ushered into the room. This lad was a student of architecture. he hadn't followed the camino but had travelled up through Spain after spending six weeks in Algeria and Morocco. I both admired and was intrigued by his adventures in Algeria and asked what had taken him there. It was simply his desire to see example of Islamic architecture. I was impressed by that sense of adventure and even more so that he hadn't experienced any difficulties in Algeria.
In the afternoon I went out to explore the city. The old quarter of Santiago is truly impressive. It was a wealthy city in the past and obviously thrived while the popularity of the Camino was at it's height. Fine tall buildings lined the narrow streets, along some of which ran pretty stone-built arcades sheltering the pavement from both sun and rain. Occasionally the streets opened out into small plazas one of which was dedicated to the author Cervantes who wrote Don Quixte. Cervantes was a contemporary of Francisco de Cuellar and I couldn't stop my mind wandering back to thoughts of the Armada era. I was looking forward to getting to La Coruna and finally rejoining my 'de Cuellar trail'. Restaurants, cafes and souvenir shops comprised the majority of the premises along the principal stone-paved streets most of which were pedestrianised and a joy to walk. The odd 'panaderia' and tobacco shops scattered amongst the touristic businesses made a pleasant break from the uniformity of t-shirts, celtic jewelry and religious souvenirs.
After dinner I bumped into an Italian who had just arrived in the dorm. A fellow cyclist he was from Ancona and he had joined the Camino at Pamplona. Looking at the stamps on his 'Camino passport' he had started out the day after I left Pamplona and He appears to have always been one day behind me. He was older than me and had two artificial bones in his right leg which caused him to walk with a pronounced limp. I was impressed that he had been able to complete the journey, even by bicycle, given the physical difficulty that he had to overcome. Also, it was nice to be able to discuss the route with another cyclist rather than with walkers as it is so much easier to empathise with the others experiences. Discussing the trek with a walker is like talking about two completely different experiences. The Italian spoke of the difficulty of the wind on the 'Mezeta' (between Burgos and Leon) and the dangers coming down the mountains between Ponferrada and Samos and I knew exactly what he was saying. It was easy to understand what was going through this guys mind at those particualr times. He intended staying in Santiago for one night and hope to get his bike accepted on a bus back to Pamplona where he would pick up his car and drive back to Italy. A journey which would take him a day and a half. Ahh, the joys of living on the continent.
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