Planning and Preparation

I don't even want to tell you how long I thought about this trip and read and researched and changed plans made a day earlier.

My original plan was to ride with my cousin (aka Catfish) from Porto to Santiago de Campostela and then go to his house on the Costa Brava and ride around Girona. Unfortunately, he went to Spain earlier in the year with his wife and they stayed up to the 90 day-limit for his visitor visa.

I won't go over all of the different variations of my plan (Lisbon -> Santiago, Porto -> Santiago then the Duro, or Majorca or Provence or Loire Valley or...), but after reading the guidebooks, I knew I wanted to visit Lisbon and Tomar, seat of the Knights Templar, and that due to timing, I'd only be able to ride from Porto to Santiago. I thought I might still get in an overnight ride in the Douro Valley (nope!), but I did work out a trip to Madrid and then Barcelona before taking the train to Paris to meet up with the family.

In the image below, you'll see the three guidebooks I used (I didn't bring any along with me) for planning. At the bottom of the photo is the Pilgrim's passport or credential. The passport has multiple blank pages where you can collect two stamps per day at churches, albergues, or other places that cater to the pilgrim trade.

While I'd love to show you my lovely completed passport, I'm sad to say that I lost it when I returned to Porto to get a stamp from the main cathedral there. Fortunately, that was after I received my certificates at the cathedral in Santiago de Campostello.

The Camino de Santiago Forum and Apps

Another super helpful tool was the Camino de Santiago Forum. This moderated forum has a great amount of information from pilgrims to answer all of your newbie questions. I really liked it and use it still to read and keep up with the pilgrimages. They also have an extensive store (from which I bought the guidebooks). Highly recommend.

Apps I loaded from the Apple App store include:

Cno. Santiago
CaminoTool. Way of Saint James
Wise Pilgrim Camino Portugués

I also used booking.com to (attempt to, mostly) book hotels or albergues along the way.