I’m throwing a bone to Pam–she was the first one up and ready today. She actually cornered Shaun and me before we left the Albergue and said “we’ve got a long day today. I don’t want you two dicking around and holding me up. Keep your act together and don’t slow me down. We’ve got a mountain to climb” At which point she tried to head out of the albergue but couldn’t figure out how to open the gate (it opened in and she kept pushing). It kind of destroyed the intimidation factor.
Villafranca turned out to be a very charming town. It’s built around a river with the old town sitting above and to the south. There are about 5,000 residents. The town has a rich religious past and still continues to cater to pilgrims. As I was walking through town, I wondered what could have been so bad about this place that men were willing to leave to go colonize and conquer the rest of the world.
We had a choice of three routes to choose from today and we chose to take the road. No seriously, as much as we bitch about road walking, we chose the road. AND, we made the right choice. No one chose the mountain option (3 mountains, an extra 2 miles, and little chance for rest breaks). Muz went the recommended route which included an extra mountain with an extra mile of walking. He’s young and energetic and liked it. Everyone else chose the same route we did.
It really wasn’t bad. For most of the way, we had our own separate lane with concrete barriers to protect us from traffic. From the beginning, everyone told us this would be the hardest day of hiking on the entire Camino, and they weren’t lying. We had to walk 11 miles before we started a 2,000′ climb into O’Cebreiro. A steep ascent after a long day of chewing up your feet with road walking. Notice that we didn’t make it to O’Cebreiro.
We stopped in every town along the way to break the day up as much as possible. Pereje after 3 miles for coffee and a pastry for breakfast. A yogurt and coffee in Trabadelo in another 3 miles. We walked in with Carlos who had walked all the way from Barcelona and a girl from Argentina who turned 23 yesterday but we couldn’t catch her name. They were going a little slow down the trail and seemed to have a very sweet smoked smell emanating from them as they walked along. They might even have had a bout or two of munchies. Things are legal here like in CO and WA. Can you get my drift?
The trail followed a little used country road, but there was a massive highway in the sky above the valley we were ascending. It was an engineering marvel to se the A-6 highway running 150′ above us. If it weren’t for the Camino, these little villages would all be dead.
After 12 miles, we left the A-6 behind to begin our climb up the mountain. It started out innocent enough. We actually believed we were climbing steadily along another country road. Then the Camino diverted into the woods on to a trail. I loved it. I didn’t care that it was steep. It was an actual trail through a forest. We climbed for a solid 2 miles until we got to the mountain village of La Fara. We stopped for a rest in the woods just a little before the village not knowing how close we were. This is where we picked up a slightly hobbled Brazilian woman.
Coming into La Fara, Linda waved us down. Her and Pete made it to here today. They thought we were further behind considering how pathetic we were walking when they left us the day before yesterday. Pam is worried that I paint too rosy of a picture of our travels and that people don’t understand that carrying a 30+ pound pack is actually difficult. Of all the people I think that are reading this blog, only Marcia and Kelly could come close to keeping up with Pam. She has become an even stronger hiker over these first 600 miles of our trip so no one should doubt the effort she’s putting in or how strong she is becoming (whining and complaining aside).
We caught up on trail happenings and gossip. Our pilgrim circles overlap quite a bit. It seems like we might get to see Helen and Lise again in the next few days. Maybe even Maria and Anton. It’s great to catch up, but we’ve got to be moving on. It’s gettting close to 4 and we’ve still got another 3 miles to go (and it’s all uphill).
We thought we had hiked the steepest part through the trees, but we were slightly mistaken. The next 1.75 miles were even steeper and very few trees to give us shade. Pam and I made it into Laguna de Castilla and had an ice cream and Diet Coke while we waited for Shaun. We talked about stopping here but said we would do whatever Shaun wanted to do.
When he walked into town, he threw his poles down, dropped his pack, and said this is shit. I took that as we were done for the day so I went in and got us a room and 3 pilgrim dinners. We investigated the next town and the albergue was getting crappy reviews while the place we happened to stay at was relatively new. It wasn’t crowded so we got a room for 5 for ourselves. I’m not going to wear ear plugs tonight so if Pam or Shaun snore, they might not make it out alive.
After supper, Shaun and I were sitting outside having a beer when guess who walks in–Carlos and the Argentinian woman whose name we couldn’t make out. They had large irises and were in need of food. They ended up staying here for the night. It was after 9:30 when they showed up. Pam had already gone to bed–her latest night this week.