Scroll down for a free audio extract from ‘Spain to Norway on a Bikeย Called Reggie’
Take 7 celebrities, 790 km, the fabulous scenery of northern Spain and a camera crew and behold! You’ve got a filmed travelogue to warm the winter nights (OK, it’s now spring but I did wake up to more snow this morning). Did you see it last night on BBC2?ย Here is the programme website if you didn’t. An interesting, at times entertaining watch. I’d rather watch celebrities doing something like this than sitting in a house bitching (although I suspect there might be a bit of that the nearer they get to Santiago de Compostela).
Anyway… it all brought back some memories of my own journey across northern Spain back in 2015. There were a few key differences; I was travelling alone, only hit the Camino de Santiago at about its half-way point, was on a bicycle and, err… travelling in the ‘wrong’ direction. But aside from all that, it was essentially the same(!) and there were plenty of things in episode 1 of the documentary to help me cast my mind away from my living room in the cold spring of 2018 back to the much warmer spring of 2015 in northern Spain as I cycled half of the camino. It the wrong direction…
Here are the posts to CyclingEurope.org that I published at the time of travelling:
Cycling Day 13: Benavente To Palencia
Cycling Day 14: Palencia To Burgos
Cycling Day 15: Burgos To Santo Domingo De La Calzado
Rioja
Cycling Day 16: Santo Domingo De La Calzado To Lorgroรฑo
Cycling Day 17: Logroรฑo To Pamplona
Pamplona: Not Quite The Running Of The Bullsโฆ
Pamplona: No Bull(s)
Cycling Day 18: Pamplona To Saint-Jean-Pied-De-Port
…and a collection of photographs:
Below, in the form of an audio extract read by the author (Stephen Fry was unavailable…) is what eventually appeared in the book. ‘Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie‘ is split into the 35 degrees of latitude that separate Tarifa in southern Spain and Nordkapp in northern Norway. My journey along the camino in northern Spain was my 7th degree from 42ยบ north to 43ยบ north. It was a long trek as I was travelling much more towards the east than I was towards the north. Sit back for 20 mins or so and transport yourself to northern Spain…
