Hello and welcome to our site about biking the Camino de Santiago. Last year's camino 2008, the first endeavour, was a great success: £1333 was raised for the Marina Dalglish Appeal, we met some great people along the way, got fit, lost a bit of weight... just a great trip! More details in the Camino 2008 blog.

For 2009, baldy bikers and old school mates Si Brown and Dave Scanlan have decided to team up again to bike the Camino de Santiago or Chemin St Jacques through France. We leave on Monday 28th September 2009 from St Malo via Nantes, Saintes, Cognac, Bordeaux, Dax and St Jean Pied de Port. After biking over the Pyrenees into Spain, with a stopover in Roncesvalles, we will then continue along the French Way camino francés at least as far as Burgos and from there it will depend on how much time is left of the total of 18 days available. Burgos may be the final frontier - at approx 1300km from St Malo - we baldly go where...

PLEASE DONATE TO ONE OR BOTH OF OUR CHOSEN CHARITIES:

Claire House (www.claire-house.org.uk) - "a centre of excellence providing 24 hour respite, palliative, and terminal care for children and young people from 0 - 23 years of age with a life threatening or life limiting illness, and their families."

Maggie's (www.maggiescentres.org) - "a place to turn to for help with any of the problems, small or large, associated with cancer."

Claire House - please donate here: http://www.justgiving.com/baldybikers09

Maggie's Centres - please donate here: http://www.justgiving.com/baldybikers

As we said last year, we all know someone who has had cancer and we can make a difference so let's make it happen! Please donate what you can via our sponsorship forms, collection buckets or the link below. Unlike the bike ride, it won't take more than a few minutes to do and it won't chafe yer bits! Thank you!

Dave is still flying on his Specialized Tricross up in Glasgow where he lives and Si trains on his Orange P7 Pro around the Wirral (Liverpool). We have met up for two training escapades since last summer: we completed the C2C South Shields to Workington east to west into a strong headwind, rain, snow and hail - all good for the soul - at the beginning of March 2009 (definitely recommend west to east!) and more recently rode the Lochs and Glens Sustrans route in Scotland.

We are again looking forward to a physical challenge but a fun trip, interesting places and people along the way (including catching up with Kate Thomas near Bordeaux after twenty-odd years) and maybe a family bag of minstrels at the end. We will as usual be providing a little musical entertainment at each resting point for general morale and rehearsal for the possible follow-up album and tour, book, DVD, etc... Still struggling with the lyrics - all those notes that got smudged in the rain last year...

You can follow our progress via the baldy bikers BLOG 2009.

COSTS:
We are covering all of our own costs for the entire trip. The full amount of all donations will go to Claire House and Maggie's. So, please donate as much as you can in the knowledge that we will not let you down!

We will be cycling nearly twice as far as we did last year so let's see if we can even beat last year's total...

Thanks for your support!

All the best

Si & Dave (Thursday 27th August 2009 - one month before departure)