Pilgrims who could finish their way up to the presumed tomb of Apostle Jacob have got there in many ways and from many locations, following different itineraries, but their only goal has always been to get to the capital of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, located inside the province of A Coruña.

Some pilgrims, once they got their Compostela, that is, the certificate given to those who finish their pilgrimage for spiritual or religious reasons, decide to walk 130 km more and get to two of the westernmost points of the Iberian Peninsula: the sanctuary of Muxía and Cape Finisterre, both belonging to the Galician region of Fisterra, and about 48 km away from each other, following our GPS track aligned with the coastline.

Pilgrimages reaching the small towns of Fisterra and Muxía have been documented since the 11th century, but it is said that there were previous traditions which took pilgrims to these two extreme points of the territory. The reasons are varied: it was the end of the world as it was known to most of the inhabitants in Europe; you could get there using the Milky Way as a guide; it is a mysterious and wild territory, with not many inhabitants; and there are legends that relate the presence and burial of the apostle Jacob with direct interventions of the Virxe da Barca in Muxía and of the Holy Christ of Fisterra.

Anyway, our 2,400 km long route by mountain bike ends in these two last stages, which are in the same territory as the end of the Way of St. James: Ponteceso-Muxía and Muxía-Fisterra.

Muxía

We can get to Muxía from Ponteceso, if we want to follow exactly the GPS tracks, but we can also take a shortcut through internal roads. In Muxía, it is worth visiting the Santuario da Barca e as Pedras, a sanctuary that combines Catholic and pagan immemorial worship of nature. We can see some prehistoric curiosities, such as the Abalar stone and the Pedra dos Cadrís, among others, and a present curiosity: the Memorial to the Tragedy of the Prestige, a fact I guess many people must remember eleven years after the sinking of an oil tanker and the following environmental disaster for Galicia.

Fisterra

From Muxía to Fisterra, our route runs along the coast, away from the Way of St. James during more or less the first half, because it follows the coastal capes, but it is connected to the Way again in Lires, and uses part of the route that is suitable for cycling up to 5 km before Fisterra, where it is diverted and enters the town through the part of San Martiño, and not through the part where the pilgrims enter, that is, the interior beach of Langosteira. From the small town of Fisterra, now we only have to get to Cabo da Nave and to Cape Finisterre, and we will have finished the coast to coast trip by mountain bike along the north of the Iberian Peninsula.