Judy's Camino 2023

 I miscalculated on the length of this walk, and it was a bit further than I expected! What is the difference between 24 km and 28 km? I think it’s mainly in my mind. When I was looking forward to stopping at 24 km and then realized I still had to keep going, I felt discouraged, even though my body was able to keep going. I am a little bit worried because I have another 28 km day tomorrow but I’ll face that when it comes. I passed through several small towns that were actually exactly one street wide. Houses came up to the edge of the road that I was walking on and that was all there was to the town. It’s hard to tell whether the towns are still occupied or not because in the mornings, everyone has their blinds down and there’s nobody out and about so the houses could be abandoned or everybody could just be inside their houses. After about 5 km of walking, I saw that there was an option to ride horses up the upcoming hill. I did not take this opportunity. The road just kept going u...

 This felt like a very long day, but it was the same 23 km as yesterday. I think I was just tired. I started with a beautiful quiet morning. I came across this old wine press, which I found very interesting. More roses and vineyards. Again the afternoon kilometers were all on the road and quite uninteresting. I did pass through one interesting town, Villafranco del Bierzo.  I saw a couple of these interesting way markers. 

This was a day of seeing and smelling lovely, luscious roses. Some plants had so many roses that You could hardly see the leaves. I was enjoying the sights and smells so much that I forgot to take pictures.  Leaving Molinaseca, I came to the town of Campo, and this Roman fountain.  I wish I had time to spend in the town of Ponferrada. It looked so interesting! Back into the countryside and more vineyards.  Unfortunately, the last 10 km were beside the road, and it was very uninteresting. 

 Another cold start to the day, but it was a beautiful day for walking. At least that’s what my mind and soul think; my knees are very cranky about the walk today 🤣. A LOT of downhill. I started with an uphill walk to the highest point on the Camino. Last week they had snow, but I had beautiful sunshine. This was the spot of the Cruz de Ferro. The tradition is to take a stone from home and then when you get to the cross, you symbolically lay down your burden.  The walk today was through the local mountains and the mountain Heather was glorious! Smells and beauty  I walked through several villages that were all built from stone. They were also a lots of ruins.  I heard the cowbells and the cuckoo. Beautiful music to walk to.  It was a lot of downhill today. The path was on a lot of shale and loose stone. The local taxi company had some great advertising right at the top of each downhill run.  I’m ready to sleep tonight. Nearly 8 hours of walking today....