CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
407 km from Santiago de Compostela to Santiago de Compostela, about 5 h 44 of riding. It goes by way of Tower of Hercules, Chemin de l’Intérieur, Cathédral de Lugo and back through Chemin de l’Intérieur. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 1 km this is Costa da Morte Scenic Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Whatever time you arrive in Santiago de Compostela, you will probably find someone crying in the Praza do Obradoiro. They have walked for weeks, or days, or the last hundred kilometres the pilgrim rule requires, and the cathedral at the end of it is as big and golden as they hoped. Santiago has been the goal of the Camino since the ninth century, when a hermit was said to have found the tomb of the apostle James here, and the city grew up around the shrine. The cathedral you see now is largely Romanesque in its bones, with a baroque front that glows when it is not raining, which in Galicia is a fair part of the year.
Read the complete Santiago de Compostela write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Santiago de Compostela is where the day begins. Next is Tower of Hercules.
On a rocky headland at the edge of A Coruña, a city of about two hundred and fifty thousand people on the north-west corner of Spain, stands a grey stone tower nearly fifty-five metres tall. It is the Tower of Hercules, and it is the oldest Roman lighthouse in the world still in use, which makes it a good deal older than almost anything else that works in Europe. UNESCO inscribed it in 2009.
Read the complete Tower of Hercules write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tower of Hercules comes up 48 km in. Next is Tower of Hercules.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tower of Hercules write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
97 km in you reach Tower of Hercules. Next is Chemin de l’Intérieur.
Pilgrims have been crossing this green upland of Galicia on their way to Santiago de Compostela for more than a thousand years, and the scallop-shell waymarkers still guide them through the villages around Vilalba and Guitiriz. This is the Terra Chá, the flat land, a high plateau in the north of the province of Lugo where the northern pilgrim routes come down from the Cantabrian coast toward the interior. The Ways of Saint James in northern Spain are part of a UNESCO listing that recognises not only the famous French Way but also the coastal and inland routes that run through this region.
Read the complete Chemin de l’Intérieur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chemin de l’Intérieur, about halfway. Next is Cathédral de Lugo.
Lugo is one of those cities that tells you its age before you have parked. A ring of Roman wall, two kilometres of it and still complete, circles the old town, and walking along the top is the best way to understand why UNESCO listed it. The Romans founded Lucus Augusti here at the end of the first century before Christ, drawn by hot springs on the Miño river, and the baths are still in use by the riverside. The wall's gates, rebuilt and re-cut many times, let you walk in and out of the old quarter as people have for nearly two thousand years.
Read the complete Cathédral de Lugo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cathédral de Lugo sits at 194 km, about halfway. Next is back through Chemin de l’Intérieur.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chemin de l’Intérieur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chemin de l’Intérieur comes up 242 km in. Next is back through Tower of Hercules.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tower of Hercules write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
290 km in you reach back through Tower of Hercules. Next is back through Tower of Hercules.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tower of Hercules write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tower of Hercules, late in the day. Next is Santiago de Compostela.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Santiago de Compostela write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 407 km.
Santiago de Compostela → Tower of Hercules is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Tower of Hercules → Chemin de l’Intérieur is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chemin de l’Intérieur → Cathédral de Lugo is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cathédral de Lugo → back through Chemin de l’Intérieur is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chemin de l’Intérieur → back through Tower of Hercules is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tower of Hercules → Santiago de Compostela is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.