Into Ponferrada

This walk turned out to be a lot longer than I thought —another 30 km somehow. It must have been the tracks I followed, since I was taking a “cheating walk” rather than following the official Camino Olvidado to the end.

The first cheating was when the arrows pointed me up to a sanctuary high above the reservoir. Since I was walking in pea soup and since the church is relatively modern, (why walk an extra km or two to see a modern church?!) I just shaved a km or two of ascent off the day. The rest of the day was foggy and humid but good walking weather. No particularly stunning scenery —over and around a dam/reservoir and through a couple of pine forests.

At one point my GPS was taking me through some really overgrown mess and I saw a track going up and heard voices up there. So I thought that was the better option. Sure enough there was a group of cyclists with diabetes doing a Spain-Germany cycle. They pointed me in the right direction and within a few hours I was in Ponferrada.

Soon after I arrived, it started to rain —lucky me to have missed it all on the walk. Doing a little legal work this afternoon, and I’ll then meet up with some others who are going to walk the Camino Invierno too.Read more