Leaving bad and hoping for good.
Finding the way from the alberque out of Ponferada wasn’t any easier than finding the way in.
The arrows disappeared almost immediately after leaving the alberque and we were on our own. At one point we were about 1/2 a block behind a girl who was obviously on the Camino, backpack, boots, scallop shell hanging from her pack. We thought maybe she knew where she was going so we followed her until I saw a man coming out of an office building. I went over and asked if he knew which direction the Camino went out of town. He pointed to where the girl was crossing the street so we again figured she knew where she was going. I guess she did because after couple of blocks she went into the bus station.
We continued on with the sun behind us. We knew we had to go west. We were on a main street headed in the right direction so we kept walking. At one intersection we passed a man who had come in from a side street. He looked like he was on the Camino so we asked if he knew where the Camino was. He didn’t speak English or Spanish but indicated he was on the Camino and lost, just like we thought we were. We continued walking. The man disappeared after a couple of blocks and we didn’t see him again.
We went under a freeway and stopped at a gas station to see if we could get directions. The girl working there showed us where we were on a map, took us out and pointed down the street toward the west and assured us we had been headed in the right direction. A few kilometers later Donal recognized the bridge over another freeway as a place he’d been the year before and we were back in the vineyards in a few hundred yards.
East of Burgos we’d walked through and past a lot of vineyards. From Burgos to Leon the main agriculture was wheat and other grains. From Leon to Ponferada the terrain was hilly with little agriculture outside of cows, mostly dairy cows. Now we started to see vineyards and lots of home gardens again.
Beyond the first vineyards we went through a section where the Camino wound through areas covered by trees hanging over the path. It reminded me of places I used to go fishing when I was in high school. It was definitely one of the prettier sections. We passed a girl who was sitting and taking it all in and a little further on we passed a man who was walking slowly and gazing about, he didn’t seem to be having any problems, just enjoying where he was. Maybe they too were flashing back or impressed by the beauty of the scene.
Ponferada to Trabadelo was a fast walk with small climbs in the mountains and ups and downs, more in the beginning than toward the end. The last few miles to Trabadelo weren’t steep but there weren’t many flat or downhill sections. We were working through the
foothills with the big mountains changing from a blue haze in the distance to pine trees occasionally lining the paths.
At one point we came to a fork in the road. We’d briefly been on tarmac. One road, gravel and dirt, went to the right, the other, tarmac went straight ahead. There were yellow arrows going both directions. Donal and I stood in the road contemplating which way we wanted to go. A few feet further along the tarmac route BICI and APIE were painted on the pavement. BICI had an arrow pointing straight ahead and APIE had an arrow pointing toward the gravel. The light bulb went on in my head that BICI meant “bicycle” and APIE meant “on foot.” After scratching “James” in the gravel with an arrow, we took the gravel road. Later we found out that James had gone straight ahead, ended up walking on “the pilgrims’ worst enemy” and dodging bicycles until the two trails rejoined.
We, Donal and I, stopped at the alberque and checked the 3 of us in, a municipal alberque and quite nice. There seems to be a lot of new alberques with low interest financing available from the government. Quick figuring comes up with between 50 and 100 million
euros, depending on whether it’s a special celebration year or not, pumped into the economy every year from those on the Camino.
James showed up after we’d showered, washed clothes and I was out hanging my clothes to dry. James didn’t go to dinner with Donal and I, he’d stopped at a supermercado along the way and bought something to eat. The alberque had discount coupons for dinner at 1 of the 2 restaurants in the very small town. Donal and I went the discount coupon route and later wished we’d stopped and gotten something to eat like James had.
The food was cold and you could wring the grease out of the overcooked chicken. The salad was miniscule and the service was very poor, almost non-existent. When we got back to the alberque I was talking to 2 women who were going to go to dinner with their husbands and they had discount coupons. I told them about our experience and said they might be better off looking at the other place. One lady said,”The quality of the food where you went is one persons opinion.” I told her that definitely was my opinion but she could take her chances if she wanted to and form her own.
When I saw them later they said they had asked some others about the food where Donal and I had gone and had gotten the same report. They told me they checked out both places and went to the other restaurant. Which according to them, on a scale of 1 to 10 was a 15 and the best meal they’d had on the Camino. They’d only been on the Camino 4 days and hadn’t stopped in Rabanal. I wasn’t glad that we’d gone to the wrong place but I was glad that they hadn’t made the same mistake.
The alberque was nice. We slept 6 to a room and I had the top bunk, away from the door and next to the window; it was cracked open all night.
The next morning the ladies I’d talked to about dinner the night before, had some breakfast fixed when I got downstairs. We had been told by the lady who checked us in, that there were no cooking facilities but the 2 ladies had managed to find a couple of pans somewhere and in a microwave, had whipped up a few things out of something they’d also found somewhere. They had more than they could eat and offered me the leftovers. I ate my fill and was glad I didn’t have to leave with only coffee con leche and a croissant under my belt. Being helpful the night before paid off and I would have done it anyway.
We were on the road at 8:30 and after the biggest climb on the Camino, and passing people pushing their bikes 2 or 3 times, we came to O Cebreiro. There was a lot of bike pushing that day. Some walkers and lots of the bikers went all the way to O Cebreiro on the highway. They missed a lot. The walk to O Cebriero had been uphill and steep at times but the scenery was refreshingly mountains.
Donal and I stopped at O Cebreiro at 12:30 for a look around. We met some people who were going to start at O Cebreiro and go to Santiago. We’d passed quite a few who had started from some point in the last 2 or 3 days. Many of them looked like they were having a hard time and might bail out before they got to their destination.
A few days before we had encountered one group, 2 couples, who were from Spain. We’d passed them early in the day, the day we got to Ponferada. They were all dressed nicely and we didn’t seen them in the alberque at Ponferada. We didn’t see them between Ponferada and Trabadelo. When we passed them on the way to O Cebreiro, one woman was leaning against the bank on the edge of the trail. She looked like she might not make it all the way to the top. When we passed the others I told them where the other lady was and that someone might want to go back for her. When we looked back we could see her, a small dot in the distance, coming over the crest of the hill. They hadn’t gotten to the top at O Cebreiro, by the time we left. They’d been talkative and friendly but not really prepared for 2 or 3 days of rolling foothills and mountains.
At O Cebreiro I thought about looking for something to take home to Celinda but it was too commercialized and I really didn’t want to cary any more weight any further than necessary.
James crested the hill about 1:30. When James showed up we had a man who was starting there, take our picture; the background being where we’d come from. After James had a chance to take a break we pointed our boots toward Fonfria, a place that’s not even on some maps or in most books. We’d chosen it because James’ father had decided to come and we were to meet him in Sarria in 2 days which meant that even in the mountains we needed to put in some pretty big miles. If we stopped before Fonfria it would make the next day 35K. Fonfria was 29K from Trabadelo and Sarria was 29K from Fonfria so we took our chances on what we saw on a sheet I’d gotten from a couple, Tony and Denise, way back in Torres del Rio.