Day 42 – Cacabelos to Villafranca del Bierzo

Walked today: 5.2 miles

Walked Camino 2019: 305.4 miles

We stopped for breakfast at Hostal/Restaurant Siglo XIX, the same place we had the delicious dinner yesterday. It’s hard to stand out with cafe con leche and tostadas, but they worked at it.

They even threw in some complimentary churros. All for a total of 5€! If you are ever in Cacabelos, we highly recommend Siglo XIX.

On the way out of Cacabelos, we saw several unusual paintings on the walls.

which for now will have to go unexplained.

On the edge of town was the Santuario de las Angustias with an unusual albergue surrounding it.

behind each door is a cabin with two twin beds

We walked on sidewalks to the edge of town

…then walked on a dirt path along the highway

For most of the way we were surrounded by vineyards. Linda said the area reminded her of Napa Valley.

Harvesting the grapes was underway as we walked by workers clipping the bunches of ripe grapes from the vines.

We walked among the vineyards for a while then joined a downhill secondary road feeding into Villafranca del Bierzo (pop. 3,505).

We walked by the Iglesia de Santiago

with its Puerto del Pardon whereby if a pilgrim was too sick to make it to Santiago, he could walk through the Puerto de Pardon and receive the same indulgences as if he had walked all the way to Santiago.

We walked past the Castile

then on into a plaza where we stopped for a second CCL before walking across the pilgrim bridge to the edge of town to Hostal Mendez (44€) our destination for the day.

Our room wasn’t ready at 10:45 (duh), so we ventured back into town to search for some just-in-case-it-gets-cold extra pair of long pants for Linda. But when you are on the Camino you lose all track of time, so we were looking for an open store on Sunday morning. The half mile walk back to town center was fruitless and the walk back to our hotel made it a 6.2 mile day instead of a 5.2 mile day.

Our room was ready when we got back and Linda’s backpack via Jacotrans was waiting for us, so we did our chores, then headed back to town (where the main eateries were) for lunch.

We had pizza for lunch and while we waited, we ordered 4 glasses of 4 different white wines all grown and processed within a few miles from here. After careful tasting, scoring and ranking the four wines, we concluded that while these were all good, we much prefer red wines.

After two delicious pizzas and our wine tasting, we walked back to our room, making this a 7.2 mile day, and settled into our room for the rest of the day.

And did we mention we are on the 3rd floor, which is 4 levels above ground and that wifi above second floor is non-existent? So simple tasks such as blog uploads, checking mail, etc are a real burden not to mention climbing up and down stairs.

Another great day on the Camino Frances.