Cacabelos to Trabadelo

June 7th - Cacabelos to Trabadelo
Sheesh - sounds like the start of a poem doesn't? Okay it really does if you pronounce it in Spanish:)

Pounded the pavement for a couple of kilometers out of Cacabelos this morning to arrive at a small community (of about 3 people) named Pieros for breakfast. And a good breakfast it was - fried eggs over easy (an unknown in this country), bacon cooked almost crisp, toast, cafe con leche and freshly squeezed orange juice - the last two being staples in our diet now.

From there we headed for a morning of beautiful walking. Almond and walnut trees, apple, cherry and apricot trees, huge and abundant wild roses, vineyards as far as we could see, gardens everywhere and the sweet smells of wild flowers filling the air. The birds sang and whistled back and forth to each other and the land rolled and dipped away from us. This would be an amazing place to be during harvest season! We passed at least a dozen bodegas- small wine producers (and of course storers - I'm sure there's another word for the place you keep wine other than 'storers' and bodega) as we walked along the 8 or 10 kilometers to Villafranca del Bierzo, a really lovely little town where I had hoped to stay until our plans had to change because of our knee thing. Incidentally that knee is doing well today.

On the way into Villafranca we were convinced to buy some fresh cherries, apricots and a peach from a local vendor. The cherries are local and the others are from Catalunia, further south. It's been very interesting in Spain and France to see how much emphasis is placed on buying locally. They do make a big deal of pushing local food and usually won't offer similar produce from somewhere else if it available locally. We stopped for a tea to assess our knee and decided to go separate ways for the next section. Suzy took the low road and I took the mountain route as it is another of my favourite days to walk. But it's a really hard walk, steeply uphill and then less steeply for at least three hours. But how beautiful it is when you're up there! You feel like you're on top of the world and you look deeply down into the valleys. The hillsides are covered with purple erica and white and yellow broom although the first two were a bit past their prime. The lavender fills the hillsides and endless little flowers fill in any spaces. At one point there were so many little white and yellow flowers on both sides of the path I felt like I was walking among the stars. Very enchanting.

Eventually it leveled out and I got to enjoy it even more without all of the huffing and puffing! As the downhill started I walked through nut orchards and more flowers and just as I started thinking that the downhill wasn't as bad as I remembered, it was. So I slipped and slid my way into town, found the albergue which is a nice clean, private albergue called La Crispeta and jumped into the shower to cool off. A wonderful and hard walk.

Tomorrow we head up to O'Cebreiro which is the last of our big mountains to go over. We're having our packs driven up for 5 €uros each so it should be a lovely walk. It's pouring rain at the moment so hopefully it gets it all out of its system by morning!