Another variant

There are about 50k between León and Astorga, and we believe Astorga will be worth spending a night at, so we are planning our walking accordingly.
The first decision was to take the variant route, via Villar de Mazarife. It's only 3k longer, and much more quiet and enjoyable than the route on the side of the road.
We saw another half a dozen or so pilgrims on this route, which is a good number (small enough to be quiet, but not deserted, and providing opportunity to talk with other people). There was a French guy, a Korean girl, a German guy and 3 Americans, plus one or two others whose origin I don't know.
I walked part of the way with JinJu (Korean) and Jan walked with the German guy.
Our destination for today was Villar de Mazarife, a 22k walk.
The first couple of hours we walked in urban areas, and then we could see that the meseta is giving way to a new landscape, with some ups and downs, some trees, and some grass for animals to graze on.Read more