My experience on the Camiño Portugués on bike (Day 2)
Day 2. Tui - Redondela (35.3 km / 4h20)
Today’s stage was pretty hard, specially towards the end. It may be one of the hardest days.
At first, everything went great. At 9am we were already leaving Tui by a convent with a lot of stairs. Of course we had to hike the bike. After that, the trail was just beautiful. We were riding in the morning so it wasn’t hot at all and the landscape was breathtaking. We rode through the woods crossing stone bridges. However, after Mos HELL started. It was already 1 pm and I was feeling pretty tired. On top of that, the heat started to be unbearable and I already had sunburned some parts of my body - yeah, my skin is pretty shitty for that. The worst part is that we started to go only uphill, uphill, uphill… I wondered “are we going to heaven or what?”.- I was sweating so much, feeling totally exhausted and sticky, hiking the bike uphill, and then stopping in the shade. Two more steps, stop, shade, break. Suddenly, I saw a pilgrim wearing a Japanese hat and talking to every single pilgrim he passed by. It turned out that he had lost a bag that contained all his personal documents. Eric hadn’t noticed his loss until he had walked about 5 km away. He had no other choice than taking a taxi downhill and walk again the hardest part of the day. 3pm in Spain. August. 38 C º. Of course we offered to help. I remember telling Eric that these hills were killing me. “Oh, sorry to tell you but this is nothing in comparison to what’s coming next”. Great. And it wasn’t. When we finally made it to the top, in a town called “Santiaguiño” we hit downhill. We were bikegrims, and bikegrims go really fast downhill so we had to say bye to Eric. We were still looking for his bag but we never found it. Like that, we arrived in Redondela.
We stayed the night at the albergue “A casa da Herba”. It is a very good place to stay. You have the possibility of sharing a bedroom with more pilgrims or booking a double room for yourself if you want more privacy. That was our choice. The only thing is that you have to share the bathroom with the room nextdoors. We were given towels, shampoo and soap. Here we could also do the laundry (the washing machine costs 3 euros). And then, we hung the clothes in the balcony of our bedroom. There is also a full-equipped kitchen with coffee and tea for free. The Camiño passes next to the door of the albergue so you don’t have to walk extra. It was a bit noisy, though. As I said, we had a balcony in the room and that turned out to be a bad thing at night because we could hear two assholes talking loudly outside the albergue until 2am. I would still recommend this place as it is in the city centre and it is located near places to eat and some supermarkets.
I wonder, did you find the bag Eric?
