Camino de Santiago reprise - the analysis

Here's a quick review of the engineering and financial aspects of my second Camino de Santiago bicycle trip. Just a reminder: this section started in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and finished in Tours, France. I'll also add the equivalent figures for the first Camino trip, which started in the south of France and apart from that first day was exclusively in Spain.

Arrival in Tours, destination of Camino part 2

These numbers might be helpful if you're planning a similar bicycle trip. Keep in mind that the financial figures reflect my particular choices in food and accommodation (!) and reflect the prices at the time of the trips (2014 and 2015 respectively).

Financial summary:

	Camino part 2	Camino part 1
Food	320 (29/day)	430 (21/day)
Accommodation	317 (29/day)	308 (10.50/day)
Travel	31	247
Other	21	87
Total Cost	689	1,072
Daily Average	58	33

(all figures in Euros, daily averages exclude special days)

As you can see, my second Camino trip (which is, confusingly perhaps, the first part of the Camino journey) cost me almost twice (per day) compared to the first trip. Not really a surprise, since Spain is considerably cheaper than either the Netherlands, Belgium or France. Also, in Spain I stayed almost exclusively in hostels, while in my second trip I stayed in various types of B&Bs. The main reason the first trip total was higher was the fact that it was a week longer, and there's also the train and air fares to get to and from Spain (from France). The daily averages are adjusted to reflect that I stayed a couple of times with friends on the second trip and do not include the French section of the trip (preparation time, really) for the first trip. The totals however reflect all the expenses I made.

The Engineering review

	Camino part 2	Camino part 1
Total number of days	14	18 (including one rest day)
Total distance ridden	1,110 km	1,031 km
Total time on the bike	75.8 hours	66.8 hours
Average speed for the trip	14.7 km/h	15.4 km/h
Average hours ridden	5.4 hours/day	3.9 hours/day
Average distance ridden	79.3 km/day	60.6 km/day
Longest distance ridden in one day	105.7 km	84.5 km (on the first day!)
Shortest distance ridden in one day	49.7 km	34 km (second-last day)
Most hours ridden in one day	7.1 hours	6.2 hours (on the first day!)
Least hours ridden in one day	3.5 hours	2.1 hours (second-last day)
Highest average speed	15.0 km/h	19.1 km/h
Lowest average speed	13.5 km/h	12.4 km/h

In general in the second trip I spent more time per day riding, and rode longer distances. If I was to give any advice based on these numbers, I'd say it would be much better to take a bit more time and slow down (something I also noted on the first trip). My second trip had some total time constraints which meant I couldn't really extend my trip, much as I would have liked to. Interestingly, the average speeds for the two trips are very similar, and in fact the second trip is lower than the first. This is a bit counter-intuitive, since the second trip involved much more flat terrain (and no mountain crossings at all). Maybe I was fitter or more enthusiastic the first time around!

Sleeping in a different bed each night

Last time I went on the Camino, in Spain, I did not book anything ahead. Actually, that's not entirely true; I booked two nights in a hostel in Santiago, the day before I expected to arrive there, figuring if there was one place it was going to busy, it was there. And I wanted a place in the centre of town so I could just walk into town. But apart from that, each night was a different adventure, not knowing where I'd stop, nor where I'd sleep for the night. I had no idea how long I would (and could) ride each day, nor did I want to be restricted to a schedule. Since I was on a well-established walking route, I knew that there would be somewhere around every 5km, as long as I wasn't fussy about the type of accommodation. Generally this worked out fine although there were a couple of near misses, notably on my very first day when I had to ride an extra 16km at the end of an already long and tiring day, before finally finding a bed for the night (and it was a pretty dodgy one at that).

This time around, after initially planning to take each day as it came, I decided in the end to plan where I'd spend each night ahead of time. That was a risk, since it would restrict my freedom and also force me to ride a certain distance each day. But I was riding in a holiday season and accommodation options were not as plentiful as they were in Spain, so I booked ahead, although of course each place was still an unknown.

In the Netherlands and some of Belgium I used the very impressive Vrienden op de Fiets (friends on bikes). This is a network of 'bed & breakfast' places, but in the original sense of term: you are essentially invited into the home of people, you get to use the spare bedroom and maybe also the rest of the house. They are generally not commercial establishments (although some are) and your experience can vary widely. Only the price is fixed: €19 for bed and breakfast, which is great value.

Dutch breakfast - ready for the day's riding

My first night is in a beautifully restored old village house. Clearly no expense has been spared on the restoration, and it has been nicely extended as well. It's recently done and everything is neat and tidy, furnished with care and attention.  My room is one of two in the upstairs area, and I have a bathroom almost all to myself. The son is also spending a night and had access to it as well ,(although he used the main bathroom). Breakfast is impressive in both the quantity and the variety, but is unmistakably Dutch. After breakfast the host of the house asks me to add a comment to the visitor's book. When I open it, I discover that it's empty. I am their very first guest. They take some pictures of me with the hostess and my bike to mark the occasion. It's a great start to my accommodation journey.

The second night I stay in an older somewhat rundown house lived in by an older woman. She's a lovely, if slightly unusual, lady. It's an old house, stuck in the sixties or probably earlier. Any renovations or alterations were done fifty years ago and nothing's changed since. There's stuff and old junk piled all over the place, except the living room which is fairly tidy and seems to have made it into the seventies at least. The old fridge in the kitchen is obviously struggling (it may well be from the seventies too) because it's not very cold in there. Still, I am offered to help myself to a beer which is cold enough today. She gives me her keys (which turn out later to be not a spare set, but her keys). The toilet has the cistern lid removed with a written note left on the seat with instructions on how to flush. There's a fluffy cat cover on the toilet seat. Above the hand basin there's a shelf on which there is a jumbo sized can of air freshener and a large can of WD40; not something you'd normally expect to find in a toilet. Then I realise it's probably to fix the problematic cistern. The toilet and bathroom are in an extension out the back of the original house, together with a laundry area. It's not a particularly welcoming area, but at least it's functional. The matching fluffy bathmat set only adds to the overall impression.

The woman is extremely generous with her time and when I ask whether she knows where I can get a stamp for my pilgrim passport she makes it her mission to find out, which she does after an impressive bit of research on her part.

My third night is spent in what is essentially a farm house, but which is now surrounded by only a small field , with a pony and goat to help with lawn mowing. An old wooden circus mobile home is set up in the garden as guest accommodation. But I get the recently-converted upstairs unit in the main building, which includes a little kitchen and sitting area as well as a bedroom and bathroom. It's all very well equipped. I'm offered a drink (a beer, why not) on arrival. The couple running the place are very friendly and chatty and I learn that the house actually belonged to the woman's grandparents, and that her parents lived in a house we can just see a few hundred metres away. The guy says his father in law used to tell him to trim the trees otherwise he couldn't see what they were up to.

The Dutch biking couple who arrive after me get the caravan, which means they have to go into the house to use the bathroom (the host is building a little mini caravan to use as a bathroom for the main caravan). I have the little studio apartment all to myself, which is just fine by me.

From my three-night experience, I have to say I am very impressed with the Vrienden op de Fiets organisation.

My next night is actually the first one I booked; the Youth Hostel in Tournai. I thought to stay in more youth hostels, but they are rather few and far between in this part of Europe (they seem to be much more common in Germany, for example) and don't suit my route at all. It's a nicely restored old building in the old city, with lovely old wooden staircases. It's similar in quality to the massive council hostel in Burgos, but with small four-bed rooms. The snoring is the same though.

Day 2a: Zevenhuizen to Kersel (90km)

What a difference a day makes. Today the sun was shining and in the afternoon it warmed up to something like 23 degrees. And the wind calmed down although it was still with (or rather against) me the whole day. It was a long days' riding.

In the morning everyone seemed to be out to make the most of the sunny Sunday weather. As the woman at the place I stayed at had warned me, the racing bike riders were out in force. They are the only ones wearing helmets on a bike on Holland and given their speed and recklessness I think that's a smart move. You're riding sedately along the bike path when suddenly there's a call of "coming through" behind you and a group of them rushes by at breakneck speed. Bad luck if you happened to move to the wrong side of the path at the wrong time. On the waterways there were rowers practising. On the paths lots of joggers. And of course endless streams of people going out for a Sunday ride on their bikes, young and old. I notice that electric bikes seem to be very popular, particularly amongst the older women.

The "Zeemeeuw" ferry at Oudekerk (bikes and pedestrians only)

If there's a theme for today it might be animals, or perhaps nature, since a good part of the day was spent in fields and along farms, as well as following canals and streams. The paths along the streams - all sealed of course, this being The Netherlands - were a joy to ride along.  All along the way there were wildflowers, yellow and white. Of course they were really weeds, but they were pretty just the same. Birds were everywhere: Ducks of more varieties than I knew existed, practising their water landing and take-off skills; geese; the local version of the magpie; various versions of crows, rooks, and ravens; not to mention many more which I had no idea what they were.

I rode past villages with houses with front gardens full of ducks and goats. Then another front yard with an enormous pig mowing the lawn. That was different. I rode past fields with horses and ponies, cows and sheep, including a few black ones just to make things interesting.

Kinderdijk - windmills and people

The route crossed quite a few waterways, with three of them using some form of ferry. From the tiny 'Seagull' (to stay with the animal theme) at Oudekerk to the large passenger and bicycle ferry, the 'Waterbus', at Papendrecht to a large car ferry at Krimpen. There was also the kilometre-long Moerdijkbruggen which was quite a ride (windy and uphill, followed by downhill).

Just after Kinderdijk, a place with an amazing collection of windmills, spoiled only by the hordes of foreign tourists milling around and generally getting in the way by walking on the bike path, I see a man in a black suit with flapping tails and white shirt and tie coming towards me on a bike. I'm thinking 'only in Holland'. Then another guy in a suit on a bike, and then even more. Women in their Sunday best. Young boys in suits on bikes. A baby behind a little windscreen on a seat on the handlebars, ridden by a man in a suit. What's going on? Then the penny drops: It's Sunday and these people have been to church in the next village (Oud-Albas) and are now riding home for their Sunday lunch. This is obviously a pretty conservative party of the country and people are taking their Sunday obligations seriously. 

Breda - Tourist office closed on Sundays

Last night at the place I was staying (a private house which is part of 'Vrienden op de Fiets', a collection of thousands of places all over Holland that open their doors to bike riders) we had been discussing the wind strength. The weather forecast had said it was 'strength 6' which I understood to be a lot, but I wanted to know what that actually meant.  Was this going to be just another windy day, or was I going to riding into a hurricane? The guy says, with an air of authority he himself realised he didn't have, "That means the wind is 6 metres per second". This doesn't seem right to me and I start to do a mental calculation. Before I'm finished he says: " that means the wind is 180km/h". I try and keep a straight face and say gently "I don't think it would be quite that much" hoping that he'll work out for himself that riding a bike into a 180 km/h headwind might be a bit difficult. Besides, 6 metres per second is around 20 km/h - quite different to 180 km/h!

For the record, I think the wind strength numbers relate to the Beaufort scale, which my sailing friends are no doubt familiar with. A strength 6 wind is a "strong breeze" and is between 38.8 and 49.9 km/h (who thinks of these numbers?) No wonder I was having trouble yesterday.

Tonight I walked to Belgium for dinner. Now there's the sort of statement you can't make every day. I'm staying in the Netherlands, but it turns out the house is only about 50m from the border. So when I set off down the main road in search of somewhere to eat, it doesn't take me long to cross into another country. Since there's little on offer on the Dutch side, I settle for what turns out to be quite a nice place just across the border in Belgium. I walk back to the Netherlands after a good meal, wondering what it must be like living on the house that straddles the border itself. You could go to sleep in one country and get up during the night to use the bathroom in another country. Or if you have a big enough room, you might be sitting on a lounge, watching a TV that's in another country. Or maybe you could have breakfast in the Netherlands and then go and mow your lawn in Belgium.

I must be on the right path!

Day 1a: Haarlem to Zevenhuizen (80km)

Wind.

The start in Haarlem - only 2375km to go to Santiago!

If there was one word to characterise the first day of my bike trip from Holland to France, it would have to be wind. Constant and unremitting, and for most of the day from directly in the direction I was heading, so maximising its negative impact on my progress.  The night before I'd seen the weather forecast, which was pretty grim: strength 6 winds from the south-south west, some rain possible and low temperatures. Great, I thought, just the thing for my first day. But then I realised that I would be riding in exactly the direction the wind was coming from, and the situation suddenly seemed a whole lot worse. And so it proved to be.

Riding through the region near Keukenhof, famous for its massive fields of colourful Tulips, I realised that there were white caps on the waves in the canal I was riding next to. The seagulls were flying against the wind, but they were going backwards. Ducks and geese were sitting on the ground, their breaks tucked back into their feathers. At times I was almost almost standing still and I couldn't help thinking back to my first day on the Camino last year when I was struggling up the passes over the Pyrenees in the howling wind and rain;  riding into the wind was just like riding up a steep hill. When it started to rain as well as blow a gale in my face, the memory was completed.

I am stopped to take a break, sheltering behind a roadside bin (the only structure for kilometres). I see a woman on a bike coming up the road against the wind. She seems to be making amazingly good progress making me feel like I must have been exaggerating about the wind. And then as she passes I realise she's riding an electric bike! I am secretly jealous while maintaining an outward air of being justified in my suffering because I am riding using only my legs for power.

Still, I am pleased to discover that despite being late in the season, the are still a few fields of spectacular colour for me to ride past.

Slices of brilliant colour as I cycle through the tulip fields

Later, a guy pulls up next to me at the traffic lights on the bike path (this is the Netherlands, they have traffic lights for bicycles); his face is red with the cold and wind, snot is streaming out of his nose. "It's pretty windy" he says with impressive understatement. "I have an electric bike and it's still hard work. And you're doing this for fun?" I smile stoically; I am indeed doing this for fun I remind myself.

I am surprised by how well the Sint Jacobsweg (Camino de Santiago) is known here. Standing at the 'starting line' outside the Sint Jacob Stichting in Haarlem, posing for the obligatory 'start of the Camino' photo, a bike rider comes down the street, "Have a good journey" he says with a wave when passing. Not quite the ' Buen Camino' you hear everywhere along the path in Spain, but nevertheless nice. Standing in line at a post office, the guy behind me notices the scallop shell on my bag (symbol of Saint James, and the Camino) and says: " You're going to Santiago?" Only in Holland (where everyone is a bike rider) would someone assume you were going on a bike ride of thousands of kilometres without apparent surprise. I'm also impressed that he knows about the route, which even in Holland, is not that widely known. And I'm at a post office in a place which is nowhere near the route.

Timely appearance of the sun highlights the windmills

The weather remains grim the whole day, although there's a few glimpses of sunshine occasionally. I'm particularly pleased at one such appearance of the sun, just when I'm taking an obligatory photo of a windmill. Its in an area where my GPS tells me I am at 3m below sea level. The water in the canal I am riding next to is  considerably higher than I am. In their day, these windmills spent their time pumping water out of the polders and into those canals.

I end up to riding much later than I had planned, a disadvantage of having booked my first night's accommodation beforehand. And so I don't have time, or for that matter the energy, to stop and explore the towns I am riding through. But it's such a miserable day anyway and I do of course get to appreciate the amazingly old buildings in towns like Leiden, some dating from 1276. When I finally arrive, I'm greeted like a friend and am soon sitting with a (well-earned) beer in my hand, chatting with the hosts. "We've been thinking about you today, given this wind" they tell me. Something to be said for booking ahead after all.

If it's Holland, there will be windmills (and wind!)

The café (local pub) where I have dinner has a slogan engraved in their front window: "Hier ga je uit om thuis te komen" which translates loosely as "This is where you go out to come home" which I think is just great; it sums up nicely the feeling of the place.

Camino de Santiago reprise

Here I am, on the train again. It's the start of my second bicycle journey following the Way of St. James. I'm on the train on the way to the starting point in the Netherlands, so perhaps I should use the Dutch name for the route: de Sint Jakobsweg. Just as well I like trains, because I'm going to be spending the whole day in them, in four stages. Actually I suppose that technically the journey started this morning with the drive to the station, in the light drizzle that is spring in France at the moment.

The start of my journey - awful coffee

I order a coffee at the station restaurant (I use the term 'restaurant' with my tongue firmly in my cheek) and it is truly awful. Appropriately, it was served in a paper cup on a plastic tray. Why is it that in a country where the food and the wine is so good, that the coffee, even from supposedly good places, is so bad?

The TGV is right on time and we're now motoring through the greenery at something like 250 km/h, taking an hour to get to Paris. The trip didn't start completely without issues though. After finding my coach I find the entrance blocked by an enormous baby stroller (complete with baby). Why is it that baby strollers nowadays have to be designed like they will be able to negotiate mountains, ford deep streams, and generally take up as much space as possible? These strollers barely fit through a doorway and heaven help you if you're walking on a footpath and two of them are coming at you in the opposite direction. It must have something to do with the same fashion that mandates young urban professionals and young mothers with enormous strollers buying large SUVs and pretend 4WD vehicles. They also take up maximum space and transport you with minimal efficiency. Of course I suppose that if you've just bought your oversize stroller you'll soon discover that is too big to fit into any reasonably-sized vehicle and so are more or less obliged to purchase an oversize SUV to go with it. A triumph in marketing: perhaps the manufacturers of SUVs and 4WDs encourage over-sized stroller sales to encourage the sales of their vehicles: a symbiotic relationship.

But I digress. Once in the train (actually, I think the correct term is 'on' the train: you get in a car, but on a train or a plane or a bus) I find my seat, only to find it already occupied by a slightly disheveled older man. We exchange pleasantries and compare tickets. It's not that uncommon for people to get on (in!) the wrong carriage. But his ticket matches mine: same date, same carriage, same seat. He's already seated and so has a certain right of occupancy. I prepare myself for possible options, scanning the carriage for empty seats, but the train is very full. But it seems that something's obviously not quite right with his ticket because he stand up and mumbles something about going out to the passageway. I do not argue the point and am happy to have the seat. It's an odd conversation made even more interesting when he rudely snaps at the woman next to him who's trying to be helpful; "I was talking to this man, not to you" he says. I suspect that perhaps his ticket has been cancelled long ago but he's trying to travel with it anyway. In the strange way of TGVs, the passageway near the doors is full of people traveling with apparently invalid tickets. It's something I've never understood; how is it possible that on a train for which you have to book tickets and reserve seating, there are always people traveling without a proper seat? And there are always ticket collectors...

Paris Metro: busking and crowds

My train arrives at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, while my train to Amsterdam leaves from Gare du Nord. Despite my having bought a ticket that theoretically gives me a journey from Tours to Amsterdam, I am left to my own devices for the connection in Paris. Luckily I know Paris well, so that's not a problem, but it does seem a bit odd that there's no allowance made for the inevitable metro ride (fortunately a direct connection on line 4, but involving a lot of walking, not to mention the purchase of an additional ticket which many may not have factored into their planning). The metro is as it always is: frequent, noisy, smelly, crowded, and a fascinating place to study people. Eye contact is studiously avoided by all and smiling is definitely not part of the metro etiquette. You have to look like you're having a really boring or bad time down there.

The train from Paris to Amsterdam is re-routed due to bad weather in Holland (it is very windy) and so the arrival in Amsterdam will be delayed by half an hour. But at Amsterdam everything runs so efficiently that I make my connection anyway: I've arrived, found my way through the station, worked out how to and then bought an OV chipkaart (stored-value ticket), found the right platform, and I get on the train just as the conductor signals the (on time, of course) departure - and all this in the space of some ten minutes! Try doing that in France! I take out my phone and discover that there's free WiFi on the train and when I connect, the first thing I am presented is not some obscure and poorly-formatted page requiring me to enter my life's details before being granted the dubious privilege of being connected as is so often the case, but rather I am connected without having to enter anything and then told exactly which train I'm on, what the route is, what time it will arrive. This is the way it should be; clearly someone has done some work on understanding customer requirements. It just works. I look out the window: everything is very flat, and there are canals, cows, windmills, and the sky is grey and the grass is green. Everything looks efficient and clean. On my GPS, which I have on just as a distraction to see our position and check the train's speed (my engineering side coming out I suppose), I note that our elevation is shown as minus 7 metres. 

It could only be Holland.

Double-Decker bicycle parking at a small provincial station in Holland