El Acebo – May 13, 2017

We felt a lot better this morning after our rest day yesterday. Muscles and blisters feel healed.

Breakfast was the first curiosity.  In addition to the normal cafe con leche, orange juice, yogurt, cookies and cakes, we got a surprise offering delivered.  First, a large slice of toast with some kind of spread, a cheese layer, a slice of very thin ham, and a fried egg on top.  Secondly, a similar slice of toast with cream cheese, lettuce, raw onions, walnuts, and a drizzle of olive oil.  Raw onions!  We haven’t seen raw onions since we got to this country, and they come for breakfast?  A menu on the wall says that was the 10€ breakfast.  That is the price of a normal three course meal with wine!

The weather had improved on yesterday – still cold and cloudy, but no rain predicted until 3.  We packed a full set of rain gear, and wore cold weather clothes.  It wasn’t too long before we were down to wearing just cool weather outfits, and packing the rest.

The 350 m climb that we have been dreading for a year was not at all difficult and we arrived at the Cruz de Ferro before noon.  This is a small iron cross atop a rather large pole atop a large pile of rocks.  The tradition among pilgrims is to bring a rock representing your sins and leave it at the pile.  We carried not only our own rocks, but those of a number of other people.  The pile is pretty huge, but history suggests that it may have started in Celtic pre-Roman times.  Certainly most pilgrims are bringing the smaller rocks. Who brought the big ones?

Then off for the downhill  portion of the day which, at a thousand meters drop, is more than the uphill.  We only have to do half of it today.  The trail, which has been a hard packed mix of rock and sand (which pretty much passes as garden soil around here), on the downhill eroded sections is missing the sand and is only a jumble of broken rock.  It would be very easy to turn an ankle in that stuff, so going was slow.  Going downhill exposes a whole different set of muscles and sore spots.

The hillsides and the shoulders of the path are covered with blooming heather, gorse and broome in various colours.  There are many tiny wild flowers as well.  They would be lovely if I could smell them.

With about a km to go it started to sprinkle rain – but not serious enough to get us wet.  With about 200 m of serious downhill to go, it started to rain in earnest.  So there is the dilemma  – do we take the time to put on rain gear over damp clothing (getting damper in the process) or tough it out knowing that there is a hotel room 10 minutes away.  Well obviously we opted to get wet. Quite.

Acebo is the prototypical Camino town – how many more of those can I list?  300 m long, and only one street, single lane width, optimistically designated the N142, running the length. There is one very short side street, and we are on it – third doorway in. It is a town that is effectively two houses wide – one on either side of the N142, with their balconies almost touching.  In medieval times the town was exempted from taxes if it maintained the snow poles over the pass.

Our  hotel is a Casa Rural, essentially a bed and breakfast of three rooms. The medieval stone shell is wonderfully outfitted inside by someone skilled in millwork.  It is run by a delightful gentleman who speaks a half dozen languages.  It seems a lovely place to stay.

He allowed that his back yard neighbour ran a good dining room, so we went there for our late lunch.  The Menu del Dia was only 10€, cheaper than most.  We started with the normal vine tinto – red wine.  It normally comes in a bottle with the cork removed and stuck back in.  Here we got a large glass flagon of wine that had a head on it.  But wine.

The English menu read:

Beef

Pork

Chicken

Fish

All plates are garnished.

I had a thin soup and some well stewed chicken and good chips. Vic opted for the fish as that has proven acceptable in the past.  She got a couple fillets of fish and chips and that was all.  No slice of lemon or sprig of parsley, or even salt.  So much for garnished.  She had lemon mousse, which she pronounced good,  so maybe that is where the lemon went.  I had my first piece of Santiago cake.  We are getting closer to Santiago!

The 15th century town church is further along than we have ventured, but we’ll see it on our way out of town tomorrow.  It was a 17 km day, strengthened by the significant ups and downs.  Tomorrow is mostly downhill.