Day 24, Oct. 4, 2017, Molinaseca to Cacabelos, 13.5 miles
We walked mainly along the highway pretty much the whole day. So it was flat with extremely mild climbs and descents. We started around 8:30 and walked to Ponferrada, the largest city we're going to see until Santiago. It is really large and has several beautiful churches and a castle.
We decided to go to the castle because it has an amazing library that contains books from the Knights Templar. We were really lucky because they have free admission on Wednesdays!! The castle itself is huge and we walked along the ramparts and climbed up into the watch tower for amazing views of the countryside. The library was fabulous with amazing illustrations of biblical stories and lovely water color plates of native plants, flowers, and birds from the 17th century.
It took a little over an hour but it was totally worth it.
After the castle visit, we continued on through a lovely square with fountains and a pilgrim statue (what else??) and walked along the river Sil out of Ponferrada.
It was a very pretty walk but very long. As we were on the outskirst of the city, we walked through a lovely suburb with beautiful old mansions and fabulous gardens. Some time after leaving Ponferrada, we came to the town of Columbrianos. We sat on benches outside the church (which was closed as usual) and had our lunch break. Met some fellow travelers from San Diego and hobnobbed with a friendly cat.
We then moved on to the next town, Fuentes Nuevas. This was quite a large town. All the towns today had some incredibly fancy homes with huge plots of land. Then we walked on to Camponaraya, where a lot of fellow travelers were stopping. We stopped to drink some water and then walked on. Here's where we made our mistake. We saw a sign that said that the Camino was on a parallel road. We went down that road for a few miles and realized that someone had marked this part of the way and we had gone too far to retrace our steps. We hauled out our GPS stuff and figured out a way through some vineyards and by a stream and managed to add only a couple of miles to our total walk.
All was well, we ended up in Cacabelos at our hotel, La Moncloa de San Lazaro. It's a beautiful hotel, very old and charming. We had a cold beer and relaxed for a bit before dinner. There's a lovely full moon outside and here we are blogging. Good night all. We are finally in the single digits - 24 days done, 9 left!!
We decided to go to the castle because it has an amazing library that contains books from the Knights Templar. We were really lucky because they have free admission on Wednesdays!! The castle itself is huge and we walked along the ramparts and climbed up into the watch tower for amazing views of the countryside. The library was fabulous with amazing illustrations of biblical stories and lovely water color plates of native plants, flowers, and birds from the 17th century.
It took a little over an hour but it was totally worth it.
After the castle visit, we continued on through a lovely square with fountains and a pilgrim statue (what else??) and walked along the river Sil out of Ponferrada.
It was a very pretty walk but very long. As we were on the outskirst of the city, we walked through a lovely suburb with beautiful old mansions and fabulous gardens. Some time after leaving Ponferrada, we came to the town of Columbrianos. We sat on benches outside the church (which was closed as usual) and had our lunch break. Met some fellow travelers from San Diego and hobnobbed with a friendly cat.
We then moved on to the next town, Fuentes Nuevas. This was quite a large town. All the towns today had some incredibly fancy homes with huge plots of land. Then we walked on to Camponaraya, where a lot of fellow travelers were stopping. We stopped to drink some water and then walked on. Here's where we made our mistake. We saw a sign that said that the Camino was on a parallel road. We went down that road for a few miles and realized that someone had marked this part of the way and we had gone too far to retrace our steps. We hauled out our GPS stuff and figured out a way through some vineyards and by a stream and managed to add only a couple of miles to our total walk.
All was well, we ended up in Cacabelos at our hotel, La Moncloa de San Lazaro. It's a beautiful hotel, very old and charming. We had a cold beer and relaxed for a bit before dinner. There's a lovely full moon outside and here we are blogging. Good night all. We are finally in the single digits - 24 days done, 9 left!!
Kudos to you both! Can't wait to hear all your stories when you come back in a week.
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