Cacabelos to Trabadelo

An 18km day in cool cloudy conditions. A great walk today.

We didn’t leave till just after 8am, correctly predicting that there might be a bar open by then. So we had a good breakfast before hitting the road.

The walk was in 2 halves.

First half through beautiful undulating vineyard country. Just a lovely few hours to Villafranca del Bierzo.

Along the way we found the plant that is so pleasantly aromatic. Seems to be wild fennel that grows like a weed here.

Villafranca del Bierzo is a beautiful town, at the confluence of the Burbia and Valcarce rivers, surrounded by very steep mountains.

We had coffee there and bought sandwiches to go, for a later lunch along the track.

The second half was all along a little used road that followed closely the Valcarce river upstream toward the north-west all the way to Trabadelo. All the way we could hear the burbling sound of the rapidly flowing stream, never more than 15 meters away. We stopped to eat our sandwich in a very quiet village called Pereje.

After reaching Trabadelo and getting settled we were very pleasantly surprised to bump into Lisa from Portland whom we had met on the first day back in the Pyrenees and a for few days after that. We’d assumed she was days ahead but it turns out she became quite ill with a lung infection way back in Estella. Some days in hospital and a few slow days of recovery meant she had just now caught up with us.

We all had a good yarn and will likely dine together in O Cebreiro tomorrow, assuming we survive the climb of about 900m.

Good dinner and early night tonight. We’re in the Pensión El Puente Peregrino which is very good.

The Danish “Team Camino” are also here with their valiant little doggo.Read more