Day 27 - Villafranca del Bierzo to Ambasmestas

 

Looking back at Villafranca a kilometre after leaving town.

A drastic change in temperature today, as we left Villafranca with the mercury at nine degrees. We had to make a choice of route between the path along the valley floor, which largely followed the road, or the scenic route, which was only a kilometre or so longer but involved a steep climb and a steep descent.

The trail alongside the highway.

We had a very short day ahead, so we had time for either, but it was preservation of knees, particularly on the descent that made us choose the valley route. Our guide book looks down on such routes, preferring the presumably more romantic and scenic off-road trails. I'd done the hill route in 2019, so was happy to choose the other option.

The road was once the main highway across this region of Spain, but it's been superseded by a fantastic freeway, taking in tunnels, viaducts and huge earthwork embankments and cuttings, things of architectural beauty in themselves.

Because of the freeway, there was very little traffic on the road we were following and the scenery was lovely, not at all the sterile path along the highway we'd been led to believe it would be.

Surely there's a toilet at Pereje?

The promised coffee and toilet stop at about 5km didn't eventuate. We departed from the highway as the trail took a detour through a small village. Until Covid, these small villages would all have been busy with catering for pilgrims, but not all have come back to life in the relatively recent revival in pilgrim traffic. Pereje was one of these - nothing at all happening - it was like a ghost village. Here's a very sketchy outline of a linguistic detail: There's been a resurgence in this region of the use of the letter 'x' in place of 'j', so Pereje would be spelt Perexe and pronounced Pereshe.

Ghost towns, just an eerie face at an upstairs window.

On the subject of regional economy, my friend Vic, back in Nelson, New Zealand, sent me a very interesting story about the effect that pilgrims have on the economy of the towns along the Camino and of how Covid has played a part. Here's a link to that story, click here.

Walking into Trabadelo, lovely forests of ancient trees.

The toilet question was getting extreme, so we hastened along to the next village of Trabadelo, at 10km from our start point for the day. It was strange that we'd seen very few pilgrims on the road today. We guessed that many would have taken the hill route. To our surprise, the first bar we came to was absolutely loaded. Tables inside and outside were heaving with hungry and thirsty pilgrims. I asked a couple of them if they knew why there were so many people. No one knew, although a slightly dotty woman looked at me in surprise "Well it's the Camino!" Really!

The highway and the freeway were still our constant comapnions.

We never solved that mystery, but we drifted on, feeling more comfortable with our separate inner turmoils.

It was a ridiculously short time until we reached our destination of Ambasmestas (the name means the meeting of two streams). It was barely 11am, but they showed us into a lovely lounge for ten minutes while they finished sorting our room. 

The town is in a strange position, midway between the major stopping points of Villafranca and O Cebreira. That section is close to 30km, with a stiff climb at the end, so it's surprising that more pilgrims haven't done as we did and split it into two very short, easy days. Easy to be smug. We're in a lovely hotel, with a big terrace outside our room. We've used it for setting out our clothesline and also for a bit of tonsorial surgery (haircut). 

However, the town is dead. The sole supermarket/grocery store, where I got such cold cheap beer in 2019 has closed down and so far (at 6pm) no one else seems to have checked in. 

We had a wander around town to make sure. We found a lovely church.

With a beautiful interior.

When we checked in, we had been told the bar opened at 1pm. Seemed a missed business opportunity, as pilgrims were streaming by and many would have stopped. We presented ourselves there soon after 1pm looking for food, only to be told that the nearest available lunch was a kilometre away, at the next town. Cathie soon established that lunch meant something elaborate and they were soon able to whip up some very nice boccadillos with ham and cheese (what else in Spain). From our expert vantage point it seems that a sign outside offering, food, coffee, beer etc from 11am would have attracted dozens of the passing parade.

Feeling faint from all the excitement, we had showers and fell into a pilgrim torpor. We're definitely getting more tired as days go by. We only have eight days to go and with one exemption they're all quite short, but we're making more and more use of the daily siesta as time goes by.

We roused ourselves sometime after 4pm. I've busily shuttled up and down to the bar, returning each time with a little dish of potato crisps. It's a hard life, as long as you don't weaken.

Today has been a very pleasant day. Rather than arriving in a lather of sweat after a torrid hour or more under the blazing sun, temperatures had stayed in the low to mid teens. Even now at 6pm, it's only 17 and tomorrow's predictions for the climb to O Cebreira are looking similar.

Dinner is still an hour away - time to find a new book.

We really like this hotel and encourage other pilgrims to make a stop here. We went down to dinner and found to our dismay that there was only one other pilgrim eating there. As I'd overheard him trying to communicate in English, I later went over to chat.

Lucien was from Belgium and it was his 62nd birthday. He had biked from his home and was doing distances of 100km or more and would be in Santiago in three days - as opposed to our eight.

Lucien bought us all a celebratory whisky and we await his music choice for tomorrow. 

To celebrate his birthday, he bought us all a lovely whiskey.

Here's today's Relive video: https://www.relive.cc/view/v7O9BEGJgL6

Today's music - it seems appropriate that it's from an album called On the Track and it's a ditty about that most ubiquitous item on the trail, the hiking pole (by any other name would be as sweet): https://youtu.be/ru4IqqeNduM

Not too many photos today - here they are: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Gi9SSSf9Mip9b7Px6

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