Day 40 – to Villafranca del Bierzo

After a windy night up at 1100 metres, it was just a hop into the next valley this morning, using the village of Montes de Valdueza as base. This is a much more genuine village than Peñalba, and actually has some people living here throughout the year. Very few young people it seems though, and roughly about half the houses are derelict and even falling down, most of which have rough and scribbled ‘vende’ signs up with a telephone number to call. It would be a good place to live, though I do expect that tucked in between the mountains, it will get some big numbers of rainfall.

The parking for hikers is shared by that for the Monastery of San Pedro de Montes.

It was founded in the 7th century by San Fructuoso, though few of those ruins remain. Coincidentally, this was the era of St Cuthbert, whose death and subsequent tomb founded Durham Cathedral, which I was reading about only a couple of days ago. The monastery remained active until the Muslim invasion a hundred or so years later. It was restored by San Genadio in the 12th century.

Genadio re-founded the monastery, but with 12 monks there, he became too disturbed and took himself off to live a hermitic life in a cave, which I walked past yesterday.

I found a circuit in old paths above the village that took in a mountain pass and gave excellent views of the locality. There had actually been a drop of rain early in the morning, but the wind soon blew the cloud cover away for a ‘sunny intervals’ sort of day.

Then it was time to cross the A6 and take the chance of a supermarket, actually a Carrefour, in the town of Ponferrada. I try to be as quick as possible when passing through bigger towns, and did pretty well here.

On then to Villafranca, about 15 kilometres west, a busy town on the Camino de Santiago, so with all the restaurants and accommodation that generates. This afternoon though it was quiet, and at 20C, bout as warm as I would ever want it. It will approach double that in a couple of months.

There’s an area for campervans here, as there is in most towns. I’m parked up there, and late afternoon took a walk in for a beer. Most of the bars and restaurants are still closed for the season, though it does seem next weekend, Easter, will be busy. I’ll be hidden up on a mountain somewhere hopefully..