Safety

Jules21 said:

I have planned to cycle Camino de
Frances in mid May.

Click to expand...

There are over 500 pilgrims per day in May, so you will not be alone. Most of them are on foot, so you will be speeding by, but they will be around. Courteous bicyclists will be on the roads that parallel the footpath at times, but they are only rarely very far apart.

Jules21 said:

Hi.
No doubt this question has been asked before.
I have planned to cycle Camino de
Frances in mid May. I am doing it alone. It’s an exciting but daunting prospect, but I want to be brave enough to see it through.
My question is will there always be people in sight when doing the Camino? My fear is to be alone in the middle of a vast open space and feel unsafe.
I’ve read about the odd assault on women / men flashing at you etc

How safe will I be? I am cautious and aware of my surroundings at all times, but I want to be relaxed and not fearful.

Many thanks.
J

Click to expand...

Safer than at home

Your path as a cyclist varies from the walkers considerably. You’re sometimes on the same path, sometimes on a parallel path within sight of each other, and sometimes on roads far from the walkers. Given that cyclists are perhaps 5% of pilgrims, you may be alone at times.

I’ve cycled in many countries, and Spanish drivers were consistently courteous and patient. The roadways were also in good shape with decent shoulders, though the path was occasionally on busier roads than I liked. I had no bad experiences, and I had several nice exchanges with local Spanish cyclists who offered advice and encouragement. Every cycling pilgrim that I spoke with had a similar experience to mine.

Several cities, Pamplona, Burgos, Leon, etc. have long urban stretches, and I strongly recommend having a phone with a mapping application (I used Google maps & the Guthook app) to find your way through. I also took occasional alternate routes when the walker path was crowded and rocky.

I found a Spanish book on cycling the Camino in a Pamplona bookstore that had maps, suggested stages, and which sections of the path that were not rideable. I can’t remember the title after leaving it in SdC, but there can’t be many others. It also helpfully listed bike shops along the way since they were fairly scarce.

The main issue I found is that you’re a community of one since you move at a different pace than the walkers, and you never see the same ones for more than a night. Cyclists are so few and tend to go differing distances, so I mostly rode alone.

Penbaysail said:

Your path as a cyclist varies from the walkers considerably. You’re sometimes on the same path, sometimes on a parallel path within sight of each other, and sometimes on roads far from the walkers. Given that cyclists are perhaps 5% of pilgrims, you may be alone at times.

Click to expand...

That rather depends on the cyclist, their bike, and their personal choice of route. Over the years I've noticed a huge shift in cycling on the Camino. It used to be the case that most cyclists on the Camino had road touring bikes and stuck to broad surfaced paths and roads - often diverting from the yellow-arrow rough footpaths for much of the way. With the shift towards mountain and all-terrain bikes a lot of cyclists seem to regard following the marked footpath at all times as something of a personal challenge and rarely divert on to alternative routes.