Last night Robert and I had a very nice meal at Mesón Los Ancares. The food and wine were excellent and they are one of the few restaurants cooking before 8pm in Villafranca del Bierzo.
With the early dinner I was in bed early. We had agreed to leave at 7am and meet at the one open coffee place in town. Robert tried to leave but the albergue door was locked by key and he was a few minutes late. I guess they haven't had a major fire incident in Spain to change that or they have and don't care. Don't think I have been anywhere in the world where you can be locked in a building.
We walked in the dark on the side of the road. Then we walked in the light on the side of the road. The entire day was on hard surfaces and that just hurts more. The local roads we were on run parallel to the A-6 which is a major 4 lane freeway going to Madrid. One odd thing we noticed all day were signs in windows protesting wind turbines. Why? The aesthetic of wind turbines could not be worse than the constant drone of high speed traffic on the elevated causeway running through their valley.
It rained lightly sometimes but the sky looked very threatening all the time.
When we reached Las Herrerias Robert made an inappropriate joke and we stopped for lunch. The cook was good enough to heat up some soup for us to go with our sandwiches.
Just out of town we parted ways. Robert was following the Camino to O Cebreiro. I could not get a booking in O Cebreiro but got one in Pedrafita do Cebreiro which is on the A-6 about 3.5km from O Cebreiro. I needed to follow the main road out of Las Herrerias. I think we were going uphill in different valleys. The Camino was shorter and much steeper. I still have a few hundred meters of climbing tomorrow to get to O Cebreiro but my grades were not close to those on the Camino and I had a steady 5%.
My solo walk started with a very steep section that took me back to the main road which was quite a bit above the town. The main road was a pretty steady 5% grade and I did not encounter a single car for 10km. I was walking easy and it was pretty good going. Apparently, this was the Camino bike route. It then started raining hard. It rained for the next two hours hard.
At one point just before my road was going under the A-6, and I thought to continue beside it on the other side, I see yellow arrows on the road directing bikes to go down some dodgy looking side road. I could not see anything in the rain and could not check my phone with no shelter, wet hands and steamed up glasses so I thought the safest course was to stay on the main road. I passed under the giant freeway causeway and soon saw my road closed and it looked like the freeway traffic was being diverted onto it. My access was blocked off completely. I should have followed the bike arrows. Backtracking wasted some time but it put me on road/path that was a little more sheltered but less direct.
It was still raining pretty hard but it let up just as I saw some houses. The sun came out for a few minutes. As I walked though this collection of houses I could see Pedrafita do Cebreiro and the reason traffic was being diverted. The causeway had collapsed. This happened a few months ago while the had the section closed for work, but it was a pretty major engineering failure. I Googled it.
Then I saw a sign that said I was in Galicia. Finally, made it to my little hotel and I am not leaving this building until the morning!
I lied. The bar/restaurant in my place is all closed up. Not sure what this means but I have wandered this town and found a bar where I am signifacantly lowering the average age. Beer is beer, but this is a grim town with giant trucks running down main street.
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