Santiago is the patron saint of Spain. Santiago de Compostela celebrates that saint's day. Nobody has been here long without knowing that. It's part of the common knowledge. You don't have to ask, how did you know? Everybody knows. It's understood.
We knew the history, but to think we might be part of it ourselves? Now? It never occurred to us. We would drive past these people with packs on their backs and ask each other, "what are they doing"? Walking the camino? Really?
Then one day... and it grows on you.
After the fiestas in Santiago we returned to Astorga to pick up where we left off and I didn't post anything because I wasn't sure at all how it was going to go.
Leaving Astorga at elevation 858m, one crosses a land not nearly so intensely cultivated as the lands we passed, almost a chaparral really, then rising steadily to 1150m at Rabanal del Camino where apart from a few cows there seems to be no agriculture at all - nothing like we have been used to. All this in a distance of only about 20km. We stayed at the Albergue Gaucelmo which is run by an English organization, The Confraternity of St. James. See the link at left.
From there the camino rises to its highest elevation (1500m) at Puerto del Foncebadón and descends again to 1150m at El Acebo. That in only another 17 km., but over the roughest trail we had seen since Roncesvalles. Then over still another 8km dropping 650m more on equally bad trail and you arrive in a "bowl" between mountains that is known as "El Bierzo" (elev. about 500m). Some of that trail may have been Roman. I don't know. There were places that seemed to have that Roman roadbed under the loose rubble. The name El Bierzo derives from the Roman town Bergidum which is today Cacabelos; the name now being given to the region.
El Bierzo is famous for its produce, vegetables and especially tree fruits. I can never pass up their cherries whenever I find them. We walked in past irrigated vegetables to Ponferrada, a significant city, and on to Villafranca where we were back in vineyards.
Vintners seem to like to attribute their wines to micro-climates or "terroir". I think they exaggerate the importance. Wine making is a skill like many others and vintinors are usually happy to buy good grapes from wherever they find them. But in El Bierzo the climatic difference is visible. There were palm trees outside our albergue in Villafranca at 42°N latitude; obviously imported, but they had been there a while.
Leaving Villafranca the camino takes you through some beautiful small towns, Cacabelos being one of them, following a natural pass through the mountain made by the Valcarce River. The highway engineers noticed this pass too. So, for the next 20 km. the original camino has been paved over by highway. You walk asphalt, climbing steadily to about 670m with the river (at this point more a mountain stream) and wren song, on your left.
Then you leave the asphalt and 9km. later you have left Castillia y Leon for Galicia and are back at 1300m at O Cebreiro.
And there we had to leave the camino again.
Details to follow.
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