France Spain Portugal

[ken]

We are looking at a ride from Bordeaux, pretty well along the coast
into Spain and ending up at Porto.
We have done one from Marseilles to Barcelona a few years back and it
was our best ride ever.
Does anyone have any comments or experience on what we are planning or
any part of it?

[ken]

The route would look like this:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=5034403406363441501,43.420440,-3.838020%3B15432669303023662884,43.469000,-5.478220%3B5236796374148757290,43.534620,-7.261300&saddr=bordeaux+france&daddr=A-8+%4043.420440,+-3.838020+to:A-8+%4043.469000,+-5.478220+to:N-634%2FE-70%2FCarretera+de+Mondo%C3%B1edo+%4043.534620,+-7.261300+to:42.843751,-8.55835+to:porto+portugal&mra=dpe&mrcr=0&mrsp=4&sz=7&via=1,2,3,4&dirflg=h&sll=42.99329,-4.571575&sspn=4.306806,12.041016&ie=UTF8&t=p&z=7

[jp1138]

As nobody replied yet ...
The northern Spain costal road is one of my best *drives* in Europe.
Vigo and Coruna deserve to be visited.

Maybe you know ? It's too the road of pilgrimage to the Cathedral of
Santiago de Compostela: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_St._James

Sholl

[ken]

On May 21, 4:48 am, jp1138 <Sholly....@gmail.com> wrote:
> ken wrote:
> > On May 16, 3:54�pm, ken <k...@killcare.com> wrote:
> > > We are looking at a ride from Bordeaux, pretty well along the coast
> > > into Spain and ending up at Porto.
> > > We have done one from Marseilles to Barcelona a few years back and it
> > > was our best ride ever.
> > > Does anyone have any comments or experience on what we are planning or
> > > any part of it?
>
> > The route would look like this:

> >  http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=5034403406363441501,43....

>
> As nobody replied yet ...
> The northern Spain costal road is one of my best *drives* in Europe.
> Vigo and Coruna deserve to be visited.
>
> Maybe you know ? It's too the road of pilgrimage to the Cathedral of
> Santiago de Compostela:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_St._James
>
> Sholl

Thanks, Sholl. I did know about Santiago de Compostela.
How is the road for cycling?
I'm not too worried about hills, just traffic and road width.

[jp1138]

I went there 4 years ago in spring, I remember small size perfect
roads - ?? 2 * 4m ?? - with light traffic and lot of turns among
roller
coaster hills along the ocean (and very often a strong wild orange
flower scent) but it's just *driver* memories, a map or google may be
more reliable.

Not very touristic in April, anyway much less touristic than
Mediterranean
shore, nice people. No memory of *any* bike lane anywhere ??.

I always take a bicycle but only ride it in flat areas and towns ; a
200m hill a day is enough for me :).

Sholl

[Pat]

Thanks, Sholl. I did know about Santiago de Compostela.
How is the road for cycling?
I'm not too worried about hills, just traffic and road width.

I did the Santiago pilgrimage in September of 2007 from O Porto to Santiago
de Compostela. It includes some roads, but also has forestry paths and farm
paths. You cannot ride a bike along the entire trip. Well, if you wish to
carry it over a couple of those "mountains". There was one stretch so
vertical that I could reach out and touch the ground in front of me as I
climbed up the hill! I remember at the time thinking, "So, that's why we
haven't seen any cyclists!"

Some of the hill climbs weren't up roads, either. More like goat tracks or
walking through small creeks where you had to skip from rock to rock or get
your feet wet. And, there were downhills just like that as well. I remember
one where the forestry people had gone in and dumped a bunch of rocks to
control erosion on the trail going downhill. The rocks were angular and
about the size of grapefruits. We crossed a creek with a drop of about 15
feet into the water by going over a couple of steel planks that someone had
laid down.

I'm a cyclist, and I know it wouldn't be any fun to try and take a bike
there. Sorry about that.

Pat in TX