A600AASS Day 11 - Molinaseca to Villafranca del Bierzo
24.10.22
34 Km
A short newsletter tonight because, well, thirty four kilometres.
We started under starlight from Molinaseca, walking 8 kilometres before a breakfast of tortilla, eggs and jamon on toast spread with tomato, lemon cake, and two cafes con leche in Ponferrada. Have I mentioned we’re eating well?
A wrong turn and a well-meaning misdirection meant that we left town on one of those interminably straight roads, the kind that leads you from depression to desolation to desperation.
Wholesale supermarkets. Used car dealers. Boarded-up shop fronts and abandoned businesses. And then, amongst it all, a house that was once someone’s dream, long-since abandoned.
Things got better from Cacabelos, helped — no doubt — by a couple of beers and a delicious tuna empanada in a fancy restaurant. Soon after, we were in wine country, ducking and diving through rolling hills of vines, leaves on an autumnal turn made all the more dramatic by rolling mists and boiling clouds.
We landed at Albergue Leo in Villafranca just the right side of shattered.
Our host Maria explained that the albergue had been her grandparents’ home, and her parents had met in what was once her grandfather’s bodega, and is now the reception.
Maria’s Portuguese Water Dog, Africa, keeps the peace amongst the new arrivals.
Maria returned from Madrid ten years ago after the death of her sister and renovated the family home. She now runs it as the albergue with her mother, Mercedes.
She served us Mercedes’ fresh herbal tea, scented with rosemary and sweetened with mountain honey, and then led us in to her home, and to our room.
You know when you can feel that a place has heart?
Yeah, that.
