Day 25: Ponferrada to Trabadelo
I had a lot of road walking today. The walk out of Ponferrada along the river was quite pleasant
And this mural was cool...
The Camino then headed along the road through village after village
This doesn't look like the ideal place to park...
The villages kind-of merged into each other without much of a break between. But of note, I now have less than 200km to go. I'm not quite sure when it happened, but it must have been close to my breakfast spot
The path crossed over the motorway, then suddenly we were walking through vineyards. And a marker proving the declining distance to Santiago. Very pleasant - the walk through the vineyards, not the marker
Then we were back on the road, with more villages...
San Roque (who I've mentioned before, and is the patron saint against plagues and contagious diseases) keeps cropping up, with roads named after him, and monuments dedicated to him in quite a few villages. In this case, after surviving a severe plague epidemic, the locals renamed and rededicated this shrine to San Roque
Maybe this indicates that northern Spain was badly affected by the plague. To be fair, I think everywhere in Europe was?!
... before reaching the larger town of Villafranca del Bierzo: I would have been happy spending longer here, although I did have an extended walk detour due to road closure. I could have done without that, as my shin splints, which first appeared a few days ago, were playing up even more than usual today
The last leg to Trabadelo was mostly alongside a road. Just to prove that those abandoned houses do eventually collapse...
My shin was looking forward to the private room I had booked for the night
What a remarkable change from endless countryside to prolific evidence of human occupation. How lovely. The Olympic sculpture pretty neat. Sorry to hear about the shin splints. What a bother.
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