Rest day - Villafranca del Bierzo

Our hotel - Tres Campanas.

 We arrived in Villafranca yesterday in a lather of sweat and with temperatures in the thirties. The Camino trail enters Villafranca from above, dropping down to the lovely town plaza, with its collection of bars and restaurants spilling out on to the street, then descending further to the beautiful Jardin Alameda. From there, we have to take a right turn and climb several hundred metres to our hotel. 

On our rest day today, the temperature has barely reached twenty - we've even had some rain. Our hotel, Tres Campanas, is quite new and very modern. Everything works really well except, strangely enough, the wifi, which is puny.

However, our host here is very friendly and the facilities are good. Yesterday we were able to do some washing in a proper laundry room and dry it outside without a devious line strung up in our room. We were even able to buy beer from the supermarket yesterday and store it in the small kitchen fridge without fear someone would remove it. It's a pity we forgot that today would be Sunday and what the implications of that would be.

Among other facilities we have air conditioning and for the first time it worked all night, so we slept well, apart from the inevitable night noises - in this case a couple of dogs. We also had the luxury of dispensing with the alarm and drifted out for breakfast at about 8am.

The huge swimming area in Rio Burbia.

Since it was so remarkably cool, we set off on a walk. The town has a famous swimming hole in the river, so we first headed in that direction. It's a splendid facility. The river has been dammed and much of the river bed has been concreted or paved, with a choice of steps or a ramp to get in. Alongside is a large grassy patch on which to lay about and apparently there is also a bar there.

The bridge across to river with the dam below.

Strangely for such enthusiastic swimmers, we haven't been tempted to return for a dip. The day is a bit cool and we've both been infected with a bad dose of ennui.

We continued our walk up into the town, through the gardens and up to the plaza and beyond. The underlying reason for our walk was to find a supermarket. Once upon a time people used to joke about New Zealand. "We went there on a Sunday and it was closed," they'd scoff. Spain is worse. Not only do the supermarkets close on a Sunday, but they close every afternoon too. That's not universally true, in the big cities you can usually find what you want, but it's certainly the case in smaller centres and that includes Villafranca.

Just off the plaza we had a coffee in a bar where we were treated to some vintage Elvis Presley music. We found a friendly, tiny grocery shop defying tradition and bought two beers (at twice the supermarket price). These were for the afternoon computer session, which is currently underway. Exhausted by the walk, I snatched a furtive hour of sleep.

Hunger woke us (actually I'm not sure Cathie slept, but I found it hard to resist). In search of lunch, we set off back down the hill, then up to the plaza. We got caught in the rain, so decided to sit inside the bar rather than under a flimsy umbrella outside.

A standard Spanish bar.

The bar was quiet, but we timed it well as the after-church crowd drifted in soon after, intent on loud conversation over a wine-fueled lunch, now that their sins were confessed. 

The Sunday lunch crowd.

We had a great pizza (the same as yesterday), then set off down the hill to the gardens, then up the hill to our hotel. Out of curiosity, I put my watch on to measure the distance - almost a kilometre from the plaza - already today we've walked the journey twice and will probably do so again for dinner.

A very tidy lineup of bins for all purposes.

One of the features of Spain is the plethora of rubbish collection points. Usually, they're great plastic bins in garish colours, often messy and smelly, but this lineup in Villafranca was very tidy.

We passed one of the more regular varieties of bin on the trudge back up to the hotel.

All this eating, drinking and walking had quite tired us out, so another couple of hours passed in slumber. So far we seem to have made very appropriate use of our rest day. Our limbs are in relatively good shape, although we both find when lying down that some knee, or hip, or foot, or calf or other body part will twinge, twitch and generally give us cause for concern. However, none of these phantoms give us concern when we're walking.

According to our trusty app, we have 180km to go, split into nine stages, before we hit Santiago on June 27. That's a more reassuring average distance. Both the next two days are very short (15km and 13km), so there is a payoff with a day of 30km a little later, but on the whole things are looking good for the conclusion to our journey.

Later. We made the journey down to the plaza yet again and had our fourth meal at Restaurante Sevilla.

Pork, peppers and paprika.

Pigs ears, potatoes and paprika.

We got a bit daring, Cathie had smoked shoulder of pork with roasted red peppers while went to the dark side and had pigs ears. Glad to have had the opportunity for that experience and looking forward to something else tomorrow. 

We trudged back up to Tres Campanas, my watch registering 10,000 steps for the day as we arrived. Time to pack and prepare to be on the road on a cool day tomorrow.

No Relive video today

Here's a photo album, but it's a bit sparse as the wifi connection is so bad. I'll try to add to it later: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8quDYhWSxsx1Gip3A

I haven't thought about music, but since it's been raining and we've been dancing about, how about this (Cathie likes it a lot): https://youtu.be/koSG0wvg2xw