with kids in tow

52. Sept.24 Camino Day 2 tenting-catherdral City of Astorga
All I can say is that if your doing long distance biking without wearing spandex underneath your pants, you aren’t going to make it.
We left our less than stellar campsite and the Norwegians by around 10:00 am. Laundry was still wet and the unfortunate thing about spain is that you can still see the moon at 9:00am which makes it hard to get up and get moving in the dark. We had six hours of biking ahead with huge hills and I was trailing Kathryn who likes a lot of brakes. She’s doing amazing for a six-year-old with only minimal “I’m tired mom” breakdowns. We saw the longest and oldest bridge in spain and had café and lunch beside it. The afternoon is always the hardest leg in the journey because the physical stamina is waining. We met a nice friend of Ruth’s from Brazie outside the Guadi Museum on our arrival in Astorga. He had been travelling all the way from France and said that for him what separated the Camin from other vacations was that it cleansed your soul. I think his Camino didn’t include having to stop pre-schoolers fighting over blankets in a bike-trailer!
The auberge we stayed at was great! I got a massage for six euro’s and our laundry also dried! The sleeping? Well, however nice a place is, sleeping in a room with 100 other bunkmates is still going to result in a lot of people snoring. We had put the kids down earlier though, so they weren’t phased by it at all. All I can say it that along with spandex, earplugs are a must for any camino venture.