An excellent days walk on the Camino Invierno with Colin, alas poor Geoff’s Achilles tendon prevented him from joining us except for a brief encounter en route in the car and at the end. Sally will be pleased to know I really enjoyed the walking and Graham will be pleased that with Colin’s help I’m slowing down 🙂
We started walking to the famous castle in Ponferrada, meeting a constant stream of pilgrims on the over popular Camino Frances, including aircraft flying to Santiago airport, showing them the way, instead of the old fashioned Milky Way, I stopped to correct the OSM where the original Camino is prevented from crossing the railway line.
What a joy once over the river that we turned right whereas all the pilgrims where coming from the left 🙂 We didn’t see another pilgrim all day.
The walking was superb if a little bit hilly all on very quiet roads & tracks we found a shop where the lady kindly helped us make sandwiches on her deli counter ready for us to eat at the top of the major climb. The castle looks impossible to get too, stuck very high up on a rocky promontory, but the path gracefully curves up to Villvieja where we ate our sandwiches, the track is then flanked by really ancient chestnut trees before arriving at the previously commanding Castillo de Cornatel (closed of course). We then dropped down to Borrenes to be met by Geoff with his duff Achilles tendon to finally reach the excellent looking Hotel Cornatel Medulas – the only place open since we left the shop in Toral de Merayo! fortunately, they offer evening dinner too with the excellent local Roandi wine 🙂
We covered the 23km (14.5 miles) with 547m (1,777 feet) of climbing at an overall average speed of 3.3km/hr ~2mph
Strava is here:
All the pictures are on Flickr here:
Sounds like you had a very good start ….
Yep a good day with only one small rain shower.