Anyone walked/cycled the Camino de Santiago?

My wife and I gave up our jobs in 1991 to cycle the Camino from home in Shropshire, via Vezelay in Burgundy, one of the official starting points. After riding across England, France and northern Spain and reaching Santiago de Compostela, we rode on to Finisterre and then looped back through Galicia onto the Camino, following it backwards until diverting north through the Picos to catch the ferry home from Santander and then rode back home from Plymouth.

We were away for three months and cycled 3,000 miles. One of the best experiences of our lives. It was hugely liberating to live simply and carry all your worldly possessions in just four panniers, covering the same terrain as so many people over the centuries. We are not religious but the churches, cathedrals, monasteries and holy sites on the route are fantastic to visit. You can get a pilgrim "passport" - we obtained ours at St Jean Pied de Port, in France, just before the crossing over the Pyrenees - and you get it stamped each day at refuges, bars, tourist offices etc in order to obtain your Compostela at Santiago. This is a certificate entitling you to so many years discount in purgatory. When filling in the form at Santiago's stunning cathedral, you had to fill in the box for "spiritual" or "religious" reasons for undertaking the pilgrimage in order to qualify for a Compostela. Ticking just the "sporting" box was not sufficient.

We took camping gear and camped through France but stayed largely at refugios along the Camino route in Spain. These ranged from YHA style dormitories in monasteries and a small room with a couple of beds next to a village church to a modern adobe house just for pilgrims in the desert-like meseta and a thatched stone-built "palloza" with a straw-covered dirt floor up in the mountains.

One of the best bits was meeting fellow pilgrims each evening, sharing food, wine and stories. We never met any fellow Brits. In those days, the Camino was relatively quiet and you didn't have to pay at refugios or book in advance. It was just starting to change when we did it. We came across the occasional supported party of cyclists with luggage-carrying coach and their own field kitchen taking over a refuge. This caused resentment among the "genuine" pilgrims. Many thousands of pilgrims now travel the Camino and I suspect you need to choose your time of travel carefully or maybe consider one of the lesser known pilgrim routes to Santiago.

The Camino runs through a much more foreign Spain than the Costas. Hardly anyone spoke English when we did it. I strongly recommend joining the Confraternity of St James, a charity which provides advice, details of refugios, guides of the routes etc. See: https://www.csj.org.uk/

I walked the final 250km or so, from Astorga to Santiago de Compostela over 10 days in June 2015. I enjoyed it and would recommend - for me it was my first walking holiday so the fact that it is pretty easy from a logistics, navigation and a challenge perspective were all good. A few practical things I remember:
- we rarely booked accommodation but had a couple of places where we had to just take what was left. Quality was variable...
- food was pretty good and never a problem to find somewhere decent to eat. One or two real treats along the way as well.
- the last 100km is much busier, as this is the minimum distance you must walk to receive your Compostela certificate
- as this is such a major route, you are never far away from a major road. Not a big deal, but that almost perfect view will often have a bridge or electricity pylons in it somewhere...
- various people told us that they found sections between ~Pamplona and ~Leon a bit uninspiring re scenery; I haven't seen it myself!

I think I'd recommend walking - especially if you want to meet other folk and really tune out. Walking like this every day was a new experience for me - it is much easier to allow your mind to wander when you don't have to worry about hitting pot-holes or avoiding the traffic on a bike. You'd be more likely to miss things if you're on a bike too - the weird rural churches, carvings in the walls, all the other legacies of 100s of years of pilgrims. It was quite enjoyable experiencing the slow shifts in the environment, the food, etc. The section I did was all enjoyable scenery, rolling hills but nothing too challenging to walk. As mentioned above, most of the overnight towns / villages are very pleasant in a variety of ways. A friend carried on to Finisterre which sounds worthwhile if you can.

It's well worth reading up in advance on what the different regions have to offer, which may guide you on whether to do the full or part of the route, by bike or by foot. Also worth watching "The Way" with Martin Sheen for a fairly sentimental view.

They made a film on it too, of course - The Way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5VZKWcgw6c

I saw some people doing it a few weeks ago and it looks too hot to do in July. Also, why did they build some of the route so close to the road ?