Bike Tour Reviews: Camino De Santiago A Pilgrim’s Route From Astorga To Santiago
Camino de Santiago: A Pilgrim’s Route From Astorga to Santiago
COUNTRY: Spain
Self guided from EUR € 742
Self-guided:
Daily, upon request: Apr 1-Oct 31, 2024
Description:
The Camino de Santiago offers an incredible cycling experience surrounded by the beauty of Spain. You'll find this tour packed with history - pilgrims have walked this route for over 1,000 years, and the way is lined by blissful cathedrals, churches, and…
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★★★★★ Dad and sons August 23, 2016Biking the Camino with my sons
A real biking adventure. The biking camino was much more mountainous than we imagined. It was beautiful scenery, thrilling, strenuous, dangerous, rewarding and memorable. We hiked the first half and stayed in hostels. From Astorga we biked and stayed in hotels. Hiking and hostels were much more conducive to meeting incredible new friends. The price of the biking tour seemed a bit expensive for what you recieve.
- What was the date of your tour?
- August 2016
- How many tours have you completed?
- I've done many bike rides
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
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★★★★★ Rich Wilkin 7 months ago
Which way to Santiago
E-bikes review
3 of the 4 bikes were great, they had13.5 ah batteries. They gave me a different larger bike that had a 11ah battery. Out of the 6 days , ran out of battery power 4 days. Trying to pedal uphill on a dead battery on a E-battery was very difficult and delayed us everyday. Not good, we need compensated for faulty eqyuipment. The other 3 batteries, barely had enough power to last throughout the day. We had to charge at lunch the one 11ah battery and still did not last. Either need larger batteriesHad one flat tire. The tread on this front tire had no tread at all. When we replaced , found that the tube had a repair patch that blew out.
The one white bike had missing chain guard. My right pant leg got all grease marks
Which has to be trashed and thrown awayHotel review -
All hotels were excellent, good rooms, good breakfast, great service. Thank you
Customer service review
We had one person who got hurt on a bike crash the second day and could not continue to bike. Venessa at customer service was excellent in coordinating and getting her to next stop for rest of tour
Other concerns -
We got a gps unit, was useless, did not help one bit, not worth renting
We used phone directions when we got off trackAs directions on flip chart several days got us off track and added many miles to the day. Suggestions to add more landmarks to turns
Will definitely use Biketours.com again
This was first time users, and kinda know now what toexpectThank you Rich, Rosemay, Lisa, Francine
- How many tours have you completed?
- 1
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- As expected
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- First-time bike tourists
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
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★★★★★ Sagan September 29, 2016
Follow along the path to glorious Santiago de Compostela
Started the trip in Astorga, we arrived on market day (Tuesday) so all the squares were packed with people and stalls.
Everyday our bags were picked up between 830 - 9am.
The Road book resetting of bike computers were invaluable and really easy to use.
This tour had more climbs than expected and on some days there were very steep and very long ascents.
Downhills were challenging too. We had trained but do not live somewhere with the same terrain. By day three you were used to it.
You are always on the road most road users are respectful to cyclists leaving plenty of room. The worst traffic was going into Santiago but only for 10Km
All hotels were easy to fiind and overall everyone was friendly. Best place was El Capricho de Josana in Las Herrerias the food was amazing.
I would recommend getting your Pilgrim passport and collecting stamps along the way a great souvenir to have and you can collect your certificate in Santiago.
Arriving in Santiago felt great and a real sense of achievement that we were not expecting.- What was the date of your tour?
- 6th Sept 2016
- How many tours have you completed?
- 4
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- Solo travelers
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
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★★★★★ Jeff August 14, 2017
A great way to experience the Camino
Riding bikes is the perfect way to experience the Camino for the person who does not have the months available to walk. Although certainly less physically demanding that walking, biking is not for everyone. It was more difficult than we expected.
- What was the date of your tour?
- August, 2017
- How many tours have you completed?
- 1
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
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★★★★★ Fuzzy June 23, 2017
Fantastic Tour
Well organized, great accommodation.
Beautiful scenery. Good bikes- What was the date of your tour?
- May 30-June 5/17
- How many tours have you completed?
- 3
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- Solo travelers, Families with teens
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
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★★★★★ Jeff ak October 8, 2017
Excellent way to tour Spain
So many positives and a few negatives. First the trail was excellent for mountain bikes with a mix of paved roads and dirt trails. Great rolling hills and scenery. Lots of walkers and sometimes we shared trail which could be crowded and sometimes we were on highway. Most people friendly and understood sharing trail with bikes. We were surprised to see hundreds of people a day walking the trail.
Signage was yellow markers/arrows and was excellent. Most of the time we followed them but bike markers were not too good. My major complaint was our maps were not good. They were google type maps that were either too detailed and small that you couldn't read them or too general and broad that you didn't know where to go. We got lost and had to rely on a book with detailed directions comparing it to a general map. That was frustrating especially when the walking trail and bike trail diverged. If in doubt we followed the yellow markers with the walkers but we got onto some really bad hills and had to push bikes. I suggested to the booking company to provide mid level detailed google maps with major landmarks noted on map.
Overall it was a good trip and the hotels were small and generally 3 star. The small towns were interesting and excellent. Booking company Tee Travel was very good and responsive to our bike problems - one bike had no front brakes and they had it repaired and delivered to our hotel. Overall our bikes were very good rental equipment.
I highly recommend someone in your group speaks Spanish as we would have had major problems if no one spoke Spanish. The bikes were delivered to our leon hotel by an employee that only spoke Spanish so he could not answer our English questions. Fortunately we had someone in our group that spoke both languages fluently so she translated questions and answers. Our Spanish translator also helped us with getting directions from locals and ordering food. Most hotel employees spoke adequate English.
Favorite city was ponferrada due to a huge castle. Our favorite hotel was portomarin due to small cabins overlooking a river and vineyards. Also best service and meal was in portomarin where we got all you could eat veal, salad and dessert for $13 euros each.
You should be an intermediate biker since sitting on a bike for 53 K a day is difficult for a week. I was a casual bike rider and paid the price on my rear end.
- What was the date of your tour?
- Oct 1st 2017
- How many tours have you completed?
- First one
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Somewhat harder
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- Solo travelers, First-time bike tourists, Families with teens
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
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★★★★★ Fabio Freire de Carvalho Matos September 6, 2022
One of the best journey in my live
The bike was not so good, but de experience was great. Galícia is a wonderfull place and its people are so kind and happy. I love the organization, all the hostel and hotels, the food, and the maps is very importants for de tourists.
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★★★★★ Gillhart September 29, 2019
Cosmic!
Cycling the Camino was a
revelation! The routes chosen, the hotels (minus one loud one in Sarria), the food, the transport of luggage, everything was thoughtfully organized and otherwise excellent. I highly recommend this trip! (I do have some suggestions about maps and directions which will make the trip even better. Let me know if you’d like them, Biketours!!)- How many tours have you completed?
- None
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- As expected
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- Solo travelers, First-time bike tourists, Families with teens
- Do you recommend this tour?
- No
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★★★★★ Robert June 4, 2016
Great way to experience the Camino
The tour was well organised with bikes in good order and daily luggage transfers between hotels very effecient. All the hotels were clean, comfortable and friendly, and we found plenty of good and cheap restaurants for dinner. The food and wine were a highlight for our group. The daily rides were varied and apart from the last day to Santiago, the roads were uncrowded with little traffic. On the last day we found local roads to avoid the busy main roads which was easy to do and extended the day's ride to about 50kms. Highly recommended and we are now looking to book another ride later in the year.
- What was the date of your tour?
- end april / early may
- How many tours have you completed?
- 1
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- As expected
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- Solo travelers, First-time bike tourists, Families with teens
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
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★★★★★ Matthew Rogers August 4, 2022
Great adventure
So many great stops. Really loved Las Ferrerías even tho it’s the smallest town - low cultural interest but great people. Two improvements - for O Pino either stay in the town (rather than outside, we had to bike to dinner) or skip that stop. Would be a long day from Palas de Rei (another favorite) but might be worth it. Add another day/night in Santiago to make up for it. Loved Molinaseca - very lively town beach on the river. There are too many great memories to list here, but you guys really did a great job. O Cebreiro beautiful. The Galician castle detour highly recommended. I loved your throwback book of directions. Had to keep in our toes but getting lost sometimes is part of the fun. Going to hit you here with things to improve but it does not mean we did not enjoy our time. The bike I had was in terrible shape - your non e-bike fleet needs some help. By the way, you should tell people who are planning to not use ebikes that this is fairly strenuous! I’m a fairly strong cyclist and I was wasted after most days on the mechanical bike. Maybe it was the extreme heat though that made it seem tougher. Family loved the e-bikes, but the keys were broken, making it more difficult to charge at night. I think your mechanic in Astorga should have checked my back wheel better and should have had the tools to fix the key situation.
Many thanks for a super memorable experience. Will recommend 100%!
- What was the date of your tour?
- July 2022
- How many tours have you completed?
- Over 10
- Difficulty (actual vs. expected)?
- Much harder
- Who is this tour suitable for?
- First-time bike tourists, Solo travelers, Families with teens
- Do you recommend this tour?
- Yes
