It’ll be 23 degrees and sunny in Santiago on Sunday when ten members of our very own Biker Revs group will attend the English Mass at the Cathedral Church of St James de Compostela before setting off back home to the Diocese of Leeds.
They set off today (Monday 2) to follow the pilgrim route of the Camino de Santiago in Spain’s Galicia region to the alleged burial site of St James.
They left home to make their way to the ferry at Portsmouth, stopping overnight at Evesham. They disembark at Santander on Wednesday, and then stop overnight at Llanes on Spain’s north coast, before riding to Santiago on Thursday. Three nights in Santiago will allow for a day’s relaxation, a day’s ride-out to Finisterre and the north west corner of Spain, and to attend the 7pm service at the church where on most days they swing the censer with 2 teams of six men each.
Two of the group, curate Phil Maries and his wife, Belinda, from Normanton All Saints will leave after the Sunday Mass to ride home through France, while the other four couples – Stephen and Jan Kelly, Neil and Sonia Crossley, Kev and the Revd Karen Nicholl from St Mary's Gomersal, and Paul and Sheila Spivey – head back to the ferry from Santander.
This is the second pilgrimage this year for our bikers; in June a group rode out to St David’s in Wales. Last year they travelled across to Corrymeela on the north coast of Ireland for St Patrick.
Their first pilgrimage was to Iona in 2015, when they set out from the Diocese of Leeds at Easter on the first anniversary of its inauguration as a new diocese.
Pictured here are our Biker Revs on pilgrimage at St David’s in June.