Today our 14 mile walk took us through Villante, and Puente de Orbigo, as we followed the longer ‘ walkers route’ into Santibanez de Valdeiglesias.

We crossed a long old bridge in Puente de Orbigo. They had a billboard on the bridge showing pictures from an annual medieval celebration the town does on the bridge and surrounding parkland.

Just before we entered Santibanez, we walked by an unusual ‘vineyard/orchard’. From a distance it even looked like poplar trees. We walked a little out of our way to see exactly what it was. It was hops! Getting thirsty for a cervesa.

Our village tonight is very small. Our Albergue has the only food in town. Needless to say our dinner choices were very limited- and they even ran out of red wine before dinner.

We went for sandwiches and a vino blanco and cervesa.

Our walk out of Santibanez started out with rolling hills and quite a few new Camino roads.

After a few kilometers, we came upon a ‘pilgrim oasis’; someone had an eclectic setup with shelters and benches to sit on, a stand with fresh fruit, juice and coffee available on a donation basis. It was a welcome treat!

At the top of the hill on the way to
Astorga, we had another pilgrim take our picture by a hilltop cross with the city of Astorga in the back ground. There were other photo ops on the way with various statues.

Astorga is an interesting town. It has the remains of the old Roman city walls, and other Roman ruins, a cathedral, and a palace designed by Gaudi. After walking around Astorga, we continued on our way to Santa Catalina de Samoza. It was a hot, long straight path.

We had good views of the mountains in the distance, that will be in our future walks, beginning tomorrow!

We were pleasantly surprised with our room here. We have a huge private patio all to ourselves!

Our walk today covered 14.25 miles, and 76 flights of stairs!

We are planning our days now to hopefully be less aggressive in our walking, and having more time to enjoy the villages we pass thru. From now on it is supposed to be the best of the Camino!

We decided not to cover as many miles today knowing that it was all going to be an uphill climb. We covered 10.75 miles and walked up 129 flights of stairs!

The walk started out going uphill gradually. After a few miles it was definitely a lot more work – a very uneven rocky, mountain climb, through the woods.

Our village today – Foncebadon, apparently was an abandoned village that has slowly come back to life with the albergues that have been started since the interest in the Camino has increased. The entrance into this village is unimpressive, but the albergues are nicely restored.

Tomorrow we continue our uphill climb.

We began our day walking up to the Cruz de Ferro. This is the famous cross on a pole, that you bring a rock from your home, and leave it there; along with your burdens. (Ours were from a Retreat weekend) Yes, our packs are a just a little bit lighter now that we are not carrying that rock anymore!

After the cross, we continued uphill to the Alto de Cerezales, which is the highest point you walk up to on the Camino. It’s over 1500 meters or over a mile high! At this height we had amazing views for most of the day. Going up that high, also means we have to walk down!

Today our 14 miles was one of the toughest days we have walked. Descending on a steep downhill grade on loose rock and uneven bedrock was grueling. We had to take it slow so we wouldn’t injure a knee or ankle. We were exhausted by the time we reached our village.

Tonight we are in Molinaseca. It is a very nice village. Even after walking all day we enjoyed a walk around the village. Our room overlooks the arched bridge that dates back to the Roman period.

Our first stop today on the way to Cacabelos was Ponferrada. Approaching the city we had a beautiful mountain view on our left side, and on our right housing, with areas of graffiti. It was quite the contrast. Ponferrada was a really interesting city. The Ponferrada Castle is a great example of a Templar castle. It was built around the 12th Century (the time of the Crusades). Ponferrada is also the home of Europe’s largest wind turbine factory.

The region we are in is called El Bierzo. Our walk today took us through several vineyards. It is harvest time, so we saw workers in the fields, tractors hauling trailers filled with grapes to the Vineyard Cooperative.

At one of the vineyards, the workers were very interested in our Camino walk. One worker asked us where we started from. They weren’t familiar with St Jean, but when Steve said Roncesvalles, his coworker knew where it was, and translated for him- he knew it was a long way, gave us a huge smile, and then gave us big clusters of both red and white grapes.

This part of the route is through some of El Bierzo’s best grape growing areas. The main grape here is the Mencía, a descendent of the Caberet Franc grape, said to have been carried here by a French pilgrim. From it are produced the area’s distinctive reds and rosés. Another grape variety, La Godello, is used to produce white wine.

A short time later we walked by a small operation that was hand pressing red and white grapes to make a rose wine. That was interesting to watch!

After checking into our room, getting out of our boots, and showering, we walked the town of Cacabelos. We picked up a bottle of the local Mencia red wine, and sat down to work on uploading photos, and posting our blog for today.

Today we walked 16 miles that was relatively flat- only 51 flights of stairs!

After today’s walk we are less than 200 km from Santiago. We do have a few more mountain top experiences in our future, but we are now comfortable being able to start walking shorter days!

The countryside leaving Cacabelos was beautiful! We walked past several vineyards, as we walked through the valley.

The Camino splits in Villafranca, so we had to make a decision on which route- the route uphill, which promised very steep inclines and descents, but much better views, or the road route in the valley. We had already decided on the valley route; our feet and bodies guided that decision. When we got to the split, we found out that if you were taking the upper route there was an hour wait to get on the trail due to a bike race. If we hadn’t made a decision already, that hour wait would have convinced us the valley route was the way to go. It turned out to be a very scenic and pleasant walk along the river and the road we walked alongside was a rarely used local road.

We had lunch in Villafranca at a cafe next to the castle, before ending our day in Trabadelo.
Today was a moderate walk; 13 miles and 86 flights of stairs.

Tomorrow we head to O Cebreiro- this will be another tough uphill climb!

We continue to meet interesting people on the way. We walked with a couple today, and found out he was born in Austin, MN- my hometown! He didn’t grow up in Austin, but had memories of visiting his grandparents who lived very close to where my family lived!

Today was definitely another mountain climbing day for us! We walked over 13 miles and 238 flights of stairs! The first half of our walk was a gentle uphill climb alongside the river, and through wooded pathways.

In Vega de Valvarce, we had to pause for a farmer and his cattle to cross the road to another pasture. Livestock crossing the path is a regular occurrence on the Camino. If you don’t see them cross, you will see plenty of evidence that they did earlier!!

Shortly after the village we passed near a very high bridge under construction.

After Las Herrerias the climb was very arduous. It felt like it was straight uphill! The views were amazing though! Every time we turned around to see the view, we had to stop a moment to appreciate it.

We crossed into the province of Galicia today. We are staying in the town of O Cebreiro. In the 1970’s, the parish priest of this village was instrumental in reviving the Camino. He published a guide in 1971 for pilgrims, and then in 1982 he marked the entire Camino Frances with the very familiar yellow arrows that provide pilgrims with directions. He scrounged the yellow paint off the various local authority’s road maintenance departments.

We attended a Pilgrims Mass tonight at the Church of Santa Maria. It was special for me, as I got to be the English speaking Lector for the first reading.

Looking at the elevation profile for tomorrow, we hope will be a bit easier.

This morning we left O Cebreiro in the clouds. It was very foggy and misty when we left, you could barely see down the street. The trail took us up to elevations that were difficult ascents. We felt that we really didn’t need to climb these mountains, since- we could not see any view at all, so when we had the chance, we walked along the road for an easier walk.

Some of the walk was along nice forested trails, some was through villages that had a lot of earlier cattle traffic!

We got to our destination the earliest we have ever been done for the day. As we were relaxing on the porch of the bar, we watched the parade of pilgrims going one way, and farmers herding cattle the other direction.

We spent part of the afternoon planning the rest of our stopping points along the way to Santiago, and booking rooms. The number of people walking grows daily, and will continue to increase as we approach Sarria. Sarria is easy to get to by train, and is close to the 100km distance to Santiago that one needs to walk to get the Compostela (certificate that you walked the way). Lots of people start there, and there will also be the crowds we have already met. Nice to know we won’t have to hunt for accomadations.

When we left this morning we expected a sunny day. After a short walk we found that we were still high enough to be above the clouds. The views were again stunning. We weren’t sure if we should hang around to watch the sunrise above the clouds or continue on. We continued on, and found that every few minutes the next view was just as spectacular, if not better than the last view. Needless to say our walk today started out much slower than other days.

The first 4 miles were downhill. That may sound easy, but for our old knees and feet, it’s a tough walk. After our initial descent we were expecting a gentle up and down trek to Samos. We got the up and down right- but not so gentle! Many times we would go around a corner and wonder ‘how much higher’ ?

Our granddaughter, Savannah is sure that we are hobos! She told her mom that she wanted to see grandpa sleeping on a bench! Today we got that picture for her!

We walked through several very small, quaint villages that had a population of less than 20 people. Along the way we walked alongside a river with crystal clear water and frequent rapids.

As we approached Samos we got a stunning view of the Monastery. We went to the evening Mass which started with the monks vespers.

We enjoyed Samos which is a very nice river city. Our ‘easy day’ today covered 14 miles, and 64 flights of stairs.

Tonight, Steve wanted to eat a traditional Galitian meal of Pulpo (octopus). I enjoyed a meal of chicken. You decide your choice after looking at his picture!

Tomorrow we pass through Sarria, and now we need to get 2 stamps on our credentials daily! Getting the stamps is not a problem, we are just running low of spaces on our ‘passport’. We should have been more selective earlier, and are annoyed by the places that have stamps that take up 2-4 spaces on our credentials.

The walk from Samos was mostly along wooded paths. We had a lot of sections of walking uphill followed by a similar downhill section. Many times we would just look at the uphill section in front of us and know in a short time we would be walking it downhill again! We ended up doing 106 flights of stair equivalents.

Somehow we got off the Camino route a short time today. We don’t know how we got off, but at an intersection we didn’t see any arrows, and also noticed we hadn’t seen any yellow arrows for a little while. Steve checked his app, and could see we were really close- soon we saw a stream of people with packs on and saw Camino markers. We started walking that route – which ended up to be a longer route and added 2.5 miles to our planned walk.

We are at our destination at Casa Barbadelo. We have a nice room and the grounds are a very nice place to relax. We also have a cool pool to soak our weary feet! Ahhh!