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.
Fascinating reading!!
Thanks for the great photos!
What fun to begin the day in a Monet painting of red poppies..perfect.
All this and wine at ten….surely a mortal sin.
Missing a full day of rain here …
Walk on!
Your photos and description of your daily activities are delightful. Bill and I are thoroughly enjoying them! We are thinking of you and wishing you all the best as you wind your way. Looking forward to sitting with you at the beach and saying CHEERS! Good Luck!
Bev and Bill
Gotta love the Spanish. They give you a generous glassful for a tasting – and for 10am. Did it set you up for the day? Hope so.
Smart to pace yourself and skip the walk through the industrial area -that’s why God made taxi’s! A 10am wine stop sounds wonderful to me….and a siesta after that! Loved the poppy fields in Spain – just noticed fields of poppies here in North Carolina too!!
As you suggested I Googled ‘Bierzo’. The search defaulted to Australia first, as my searches do, and I was delivered the page of a wine importer in Melbourne called The Spanish Acquisition. They described the wine of Bierzo as being made from the Mencia grape, which is dry-grown on 50 to 80 year old bush vines. That is a decent match for the vines in your picture. Mencia is described elsewhere as Galicia’s red grape and people are showing interest in growing it elsewhere. I suspect you might have drunk a bit of it by now…
The countryside looks more engaging as you head east, and it is interesting to see the grape vines so low…I wonder if they were killed back in a winter freeze, or if they are pruned that way. And neat churches.
Good to see that your road looks as if it allows more relaxed walking (is that what your feet say?), after the horrendous looking leg down into Ponferada, with uneven stones and a nasty slope.
What an adventure….may the food and wine continue to fuel with positive surprises.