Foncebadón to Molinaseca

A day of contrasts. We had the usual breakfast of fresh OJ, toast and cafe con leche at our very nice Albergue El Trasgu early enough to get a pre-dawn start at 8:00am. By the way, El Trasgu is a mythological creature present in the tradition of several cultures of what is now northern Spain, especially in Galicia.

We started out in the pre-dawn light to walk the relatively easy 2km sloping gravel paths up to Cruz de Ferro (Iron Cross) where pilgrims traditionally leave a stone carried from home to symbolize you leaving all your burdens behind.

The Cross is at 1500 metres in altitude and to reach our destination of Molinaseca 20km away we needed to drop to 580 metres. We walked on an extremely rough and rocky steep path to El Acebo where we had lunch and gave our feet and knees a good rest. El Acebo is a beautiful medieval timber and stone village refreshed by the Camino traffic.

We decided that more of the rocky path was not going to do anything positive for our health and would complete the final 10km to Molinaseca down the paved road. Walking on bitumen is not fun and it was steep and exhausting but safer.Read more