The forecast for today was warm and cloudy with a 30% chance of rain. We rounded that down to zero and left our rain gear in the suitcases.
Since it was to be a 24 km day, and we have come to the realization that we are 18 km people, we took a taxi for the first 6 km. We learned the lesson in walking out of Leon that there was no moral fibre to be gained by an extra hour of walking through city industrial areas. We have already taken enough shortcuts to risk our time in purgatory anyway – another 6 km can’t make a difference. That put us in Fuentes Nuevas, fresh and eager to tackle the countryside.
As we walked through the day the agriculture turned to vineyards, but with fields of individual vine stumps, not on trellises or wires. Most were beginning to bud, or with a bit of growth, but showing signs of an earlier spurt, now dead.
At the time for morning coffee, we happened on an agricultural co-op bodega that was offering wine and tapas, our first of the day. The wine area is known as Bierzo – look for it in your local wine outlet.
We had good luck with churches, finding several open today. The retablos are less ornate than further east, and decoration runs more to statues of saints, and of the various manifestations of Mary. Once again Vic is helping me with saint identification.
As the day progressed it got hotter, and the last hour took a couple hours – or it seemed like it.
Villafranca del Bierzo is a less typical Camino town, in that it has a number of streets, although the Camino does run down the middle. It is built on a hill so there are a lot of up and down streets, and walking up and down is not easy right now.
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