Cycling from Montpellier to Brighton

Final preparations (otherwise known as mad panic) are now underway for our biggest cycling adventure yet, a trip from Montpellier in France to Brighton. Our bikes have been serviced and paniers test packed for departure on Friday morning.

Montpellier to Brighton

The route looks brilliant. There are hardly any hills and my guess is that 80 per cent of it will be traffic free. From Montpellier we head west along the coast to Sete and from there head along the Canal du Midi tow path to Toulouse. From Toulouse we follow the Canal du Garonne up to Bordeaux and then the Eurovelo Atlantic route up to La Rochelle. From La Rochelle to Ouistreham we follow the new long distance cycle trail the La Vélo Francette before catching the ferry back to Portsmouth. From Portsmouth it's about 50 miles back to Brighton.

The Camiño dos Faros - a walk along the coast of death

There is a lot more to walking in Galica than the Camino de Santiago

I'm just back from a walk along the Camiño dos Faros, or ‘Lighthouse Way’, around Galicia's Costa del Morte (Coast of Death) in northwest Spain. It was a wonderful trip. The scenery was great, the walk well defined, the food fabulous and I met some really nice people. I would definitely recommend this walk although there are a few things you should be aware of.

Camiño Dos Faros Day 6

Day 6 marked a disappointing finish to my journey along the Camiño Dos Faros. When we woke up this morning the rain was pouring down and we had to make a decision to walk or not to walk. The last stage of the route is a hard one and at the time it looked like the weather was going to stay bad for the whole day. We decided to get a taxi to Fisterra and if the weather improved do some local walking from there before heading to Santiago del Compostela tomorrow.


Arriving in Fisterra by taxi felt like a huge anticlimax made worse by the number of hikers there who had completed their journey along the Camino de Santiago. We walked up to the lighthouse, where most of the visitors had arrived by coach, and tried without much enthusiasm to take a picture. It's a surprisingly difficult place to take a decent photograph.

Camiño Dos Faros Day 5

Today we walked from Muxia to Nemiña, a tough stretch of walking but excellent. The weather was perfect, the scenery was fantastic and we even managed to adopt a Galician guide to show us the way. What more could we ask for?

Nosa Señora de Barca at Muxía

Keen eyed readers will spot that we have missed out a chunk of the Camiño. The original plan involved walking from Camarinas to Muxia yesterday. This was just too far, we were knackered from the previous day and the weather forecast was poor. We decided to have a rest day, got a taxi for most of the way (Praia do Logo) and after a 10km walk ate a late lunch and had a rest. The weather turned out to be OK, Christine even had a swim in the sea (very short), but taking a break was a good move as the last two days are tough.

O Camiño Dos Faros Day 4

Today's walk was huge in every sense of the word, huge scenery, huge distance and hugely knackered at the end.

Ancient fields near Laxe

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that my preferred style of walking involves staying in local accommodation as near as possible to the end of each day's walk. Ideally this means a looking to find a hotel or something similar about every 25 kms or so, allowing for around 8 hours walking a day. I try to plan a schedule in advance, and adapt the desirable to the available. When I do this, in order to make things work I am sometimes over optimistic about what is possible. Today was one of those days. We walked 35 hard and difficult kilometres from Laxe to Mourin, a hamlet to the north of Camarinas, arriving after 9 and a half hours with wet sore feet.

O Camiño Dos Faros Day 3

Day 3 on the Camiño Dos Faros and a great day's walking, approaching epic!

Early morning near 

The big change, after yesterday, was the weather. Last night's monsoons were replaced by a dry but fresh sunny day with white puffy clouds racing across an otherwise blue sky. The light was great, clear and crisp, presenting some great scenery in the best possible way.

O Camiño Dos Faros Day 2

One word provides an all too succinct summary of today: 'wet'. It was drizzling as we left our lovely hotel at about 9-30, and raining properly about 30 minutes later. In the day long weather battle between good and evil, good turned up off stage for just a few minutes early afternoon but decided he had better places to go and the rain came down even harder. After sticking with the route until late afternoon we cut our losses at about 4.30, took a big shortcut across the final headland and dropped down into Porto do Corme. Almost impossible to imagine but as we entered what I suspect is a sad little town even in the sunshine the rain took on monsoon proportions. After roaming the deserted streets for about 30mins we found our accommodation, an apartment, and started the not insignificant task of drying ourselves out.

A Dolmen - maybe