Bicycle Touring Spain: Ribadeo to Santander
My latest bicycle touring update: cycling through Portugal and Spain, from Ribadeo to Santander. 12 Miles. I spent much of last night trying to find a way of getting to Bilbao so I could catch that ferry! After missing my train yesterday, and consequently my ferry home from Santander. And after a few hours of looking at train routes and timetables, I think I may have found a way. It’s not as easy as you think. A lot of trains don’t allow bikes on them. But with a combination of tourist trains and cycling, I should be able to reach Bilbao on Friday. Well, that was the plan!
My first train today was a three-and-a-half-hour journey from Ribadeo to Oviedo. Then from Oviedo, I had a five-hour train ride on the old narrow-gauge railway to Santander. It’s the tourist train that stops at every single station. Hence, the five-hour train ride.
I arrived in Santander on time at 8.20 this evening, ready for my sixty-mile overnight bike ride to Bilbao. For some strange reason, just before leaving Santander, I decided to phone ahead just to make sure that there was space on the ferry. And just as well I did, they’d changed the ferry timetable in the last week or so, and the ferry had left today! But the good news is there’s now a ferry from Bilbao on Sunday! If I’d only known all this yesterday, it would have saved me a lot of stress!
Tour Information
It’s been years since I took this ride, but the memories (and the data) are all archived:
- Photos: See my photos on Flickr
- The route: View the route I took
- Tour: Check out my tour page
- Book: Buy the book of the tour
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If you want to find out if I’m away touring at the moment and check my location, visit the Where’s Garry page.