Est! Est!! Est!!!

Sunday:
We are rewarded for the privations and discomfort of our hostel by a stunning sunrise, giving fantastic views from the hostel steps. Galicea is so often shrouded in mist (it is Celtic in culture and in weather) that that we are incredibly lucky to get these views.

The path skirts the mountain side and through a wood. We edge to a signpost signaling a right hand turn. On this post, Helen (former CathSoc President) and her sister Mary have left a note. Helen walked the camino in July/August and I told her she should be like the cardinal's servant who went before him to Rome in the famous Est Est Est story. And so this was her message.

It's good to get this message on such a perfect morning. Helen gave such a lot of helpful advice. It's also good to have a connection with pilgrims ahead. There's a strange way on the camino that one can feel as much in communion and yet as much separated from those pilgrims who are just a day or two ahead as those who walked 600 years before.

The Galicean countryside is as green and rolling as anywhere in the British Isles, and usually (so everyone says) it is shrouded in weather as grey and damp as that which covers Britain. We are incredibly lucky to be seeing it under blue skies. The path is just enough of a challenge, and gives superb views.

We arrive at Triacastela in time to catch the back-end of some kind of festival. Market stalls are being packed away, people are riding horses, a jeep of hunters drive in causing huge excitement as they display their kill, but the major attraction is the pulpe stalls. Octopuses are being cooked whole in large copper pots, the cooks fishing them out by the heads and chopping up the legs with shears. It's served on wooden plates with paprika and salt. We all have some. After a free-form Roman rite liturgy celebrated by the local PP, we cook and eat chilli.

Into the Galicean mist and the inventor of yellow arrows

Saturday: to O Cedreiro
There has been much talk of which route to take: the camino normale, duro or dragonde. John and Kris will take the Dragonde but Nico, whose back is still not right is clear he wants to take the normal route. Angela will take the duro which entails one hill before rejoining the normal route.

I go with Nico, and the climb up the valley is fine, though it is a ity that our steps are dogged at every turn, by the main road. Eventually we are on s road which crosses back and forth the rio varajaro while the motorway crosses our route overhead.

We are take through more Lakeland style villages and pass a number of old ladies with baskets collecting chestnuts.

The route gets more interesting and beautiful as we ascend further and the road peters out into a path. The views become more impressive . We look back to a sunlit valley, but the higher we go the closer we get to the cloud that hovers about the valley head. Eventually we see a rainbow, and as we pass the border post to Galicea the pass into rain and thick fog.

O Cebreiro is wonderfully atmospheric in the swirling fog. The church is the oldest on the French camino, and has the patten and chalice from a 14th c Eucharistic miracle that is something like the miracle of Bolsena: a doubting priest and a pious layman at mass, and the priest's doubts are confounded by the host dripping blood.

The church is also famed because its parish priest Fr Elias, wrote the guide to the camino in 1971, regalvinising interest, and in 1982 he painted the now famous yellow arrows along the way. It is good to have reached O Cebreiro for the church (there was mass at 7pm) and for the excellent food (galego caldo soup etc.) but the hostel smells of drains and the main dormitory is filled with the most notorious snorers on the camino, along with a toddler and a small child, the children of a cycling couple. As soon as this is filled and a second dormitory opened, the discerning of us decamp to this where we can hope for a better night's sleep.
(If it had been open, the hostel run by the German friends, some kilometers back would have been a much better bet.)

Back amongst the vines

Friday: to Villafranca
Most of the group had a very disturbed night due to some very heavy snorers in from N. Carolina. I immediately jumped ship and took my sleeping bag and pillow down to a near empty dormitory which was as silent as the grave. An improvised but satisfying breakfast and we leave the abandoned refugio with a "Happy Holidays" note to the hospitaleros.

It doesn't take long to get into Ponferrada, which has a slightly Disney Templar Castle. The walk beyond gets more and more lovely. The sun is out, the countryside is gently rolling, and we are back in wine country (Beiroz). These vines are not the usual trained vines on wood and wire trellising, but old knarled trunks seemingly randomly spaced, and now in fantastic autumnal yellows and reds.

Once again we are able to raid trees for figs.
This is wonderful country and although there are clouds about, the vineyards under these dramatic skies have us stopping and taking photographs at every fresh turn or summit in the path.

Eventually we come to Villafranca and hostel Piedro, which is terrific: again run with great generosity by a young couple. After the evening mass I cook a pasta for Nico, john and Kris (Angela having succumbed to another group's offer of schnitzel). I have also bought a bottle of the local Beiroz wine which is a big hit.

For once there are double rooms on offer, so Nico and I share this relative luxury and get a decent night's sleep.

A foggy day

I am ready quite quickly but settle to blog writing while I wait for the others. It's hard to imagine how little time there is to do such things. One arrives, showers, washes clothes, finds out what mass or vespers is available, shops, cooks, eats and sleeps before curfew, then rise, packs, breakfasts and departs usually before 8am. (Summer pilgrims will think this a lamentably bourgeoisie hour to set out, but it is darker in these months.)

John is ready soon, but Angela has lost things, and so Nico and I wait while Angela recovers all her possessions. We eventually set off, but a little a out of town Angela realises that she has left her gloves. She heads back as Nico and I continue. Soon we catch up with a group ahead (Richard, Andreas and Steve). There is thick fog, but my feet are now completely pain free, my legs are strong and I am enjoying bounding up the mountain path. However, Nico is not enjoying it so much. He has some back pain and it is making the walking more difficult for him, particularly on the hills.

We pass through what seem, in the fog to be abandoned villages. With their dark stone, and slate roofs (often collapsed) they seem more Lakeland than Spanish. In time we reach the Cruz de Ferro. The cross itself is fairly small and perched on top of a telegraph pole. Around this pilgrims have left their stones, often brought from home. They form a huge untidy mess of people's prayers: their worries, all the people they carry in their hearts, heart-breaking stories of tragedy. Attached to the post is a sign left by a couple: "We walked the Camino in memory of our two sons" the dates were 1986-2008 and 1988-2012, both killed in sports accidents. And so we stand in the mist on this groaning heap of stones and make our silent prayer.

The path rises and falls for the next few miles until climbing up to a final crest. The sun is fighting through the mist, and as we reach the summit we come through the most to a wonderful vista, a sunlit plain and the town of Ponferrada. It is so sudden, and so unexpected -to come through the mist to this view- that I feel like laughing. Although Ponferrada, on closer inspection has a fair amount of unsightly industry, at this distance it is as if we have come in sight of some mythical city, El Dorado perhaps.

On our descent, Nico, Steve and I stop for lunch. I leave a chalk message outside for Angela, more in hope than expectation. I wonder how far behind she is and how far ahead John is. Then, just as I fear that our little group is disbanded they all come through the door together. They had stopped for coffee in what we took to be an abandoned village, and Angela had caught up with them.

So we continue our descent together, and the path continues to delight, taking us through bracken, along the grassy banks of a stream, and round the hillside to more fantastic views.

Eventually our descent brings us to Molinaseca, a pretty village, no more than two or three long streets really, with traditional houses with rickerty balconies on the upper stories, and heavy stone ground floors which might once have been meant for livestock or workshops.

The Albergue here will close tomorrow for the off-season (a slightly worrying sign) but the hospitaleros kindly puts out tea and toast for us. We fend for ourselves and sit out front eating gazpacho, bread, cheese, figs from the trees, and olives.

A Californian couple we know (Chris & Meghan) show up with a bottle of wine looking for a corkscrew. We search everywhere without success. Eventually I am forced to offer my secret super-power -learned from a friend Jim, Marika's husband- my ability to open bottles with the use of only a butter knife. I bring relief to the stricken couple and retire to bed.