Day 39 – at Peñalba de Santiago

First stop an extra coffee. I checked past later, I was to be their only customer all day, spending just one euro.

The owners are a young couple with a small child, and not bothered about the lack of custom, they see it as since they are there, they may as well have the ‘abierto’ sign in the window.

My mission was to head up the Valle del Silencio to about 1600 metres, where there is a pass that cross into the Valle del Aro.

The last three hundred metres of the ascent is steep, and on a small path that is eroding.

At the ridge the view is exceptional, back down across Peñalba, with the van a distant speck, and the town of Ponferrada in the distance, about 15 kilometres away. Visible also is the steep and narrow road out of the village, with the hairpins, that I came down yesterday. Lunch at the ridge on a day when most of the sunshine was in the morning. As yesterday, the wind gets strong in the afternoon.

A steep descent as well, culminating with a river crossing without bridge or stones, as on the way up. These would both be impassable after heavy rain – today were about shin deep.

Back at the van mid-afternoon to finish a classic American 1950s noir, Fool’s Gold by Dolores Hitchens. I met a Spanish couple who had come to see the church in the village. They remarked on how there were no people at all in the village. I think more so than anywhere else I’ve been, it is seasonally occupied. The few people there at the moment, very few I think, all siesta-ing throughout the afternoon.