1. Background

About 12 months ago we went to see the movie 'The Way' with two friends, Jenny and Pat. For those of you not familiar with the film, it stars Martin Sheen and tells the story of the pilgrimage walk from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port on the French/Spanish border, across the north of Spain to Santiago de Compostela - about 800 kilometers. The film fascinated all of us, and we found the scenery particularly  captivating. Over a cup of coffee we all agreed it would be a fantastic journey to make and that there wasn't any reason why we couldn't do it. Of course reality hit home the next day - I can't walk more than 10 kms (dodgy knees) and none of us was extra fit. But after doing a bit of Googling I found that it was possible to do the journey on a bike. Which was a marginally better proposition as we all did a bit of riding and had 12 months to get into better shape. So we did a bit more Googling and a lot more talking and in December 2012 booked our flights to Europe to start our ride September 15th 2013.