Thursday 20 June 2013

The cowboy bar

As I said yesterday we found Astorga to be a really beautiful university city. It was however with trepidation that we set off at 7.30am. Today we were heading into the mountains and the prospect of 24 K of steep climbs was not something any of us wanted to embrace. As it turned out this was one of our best days walking yet. Even though you were constantly climbing, the scenery was spectacular and the small mountain villages were intriguing.  Our first port of call was the small hamlet of Murias de Rechivaldo which was a classic Maragato village with an interesting rustic parish church and several bars. Since we were all going well we decided not to stop for refreshments and keep going to the next village. I hate missing the opportunity of getting cafe con Leche but majority rules or to put it another way, female votes count as double. Anyway 4K later we stopped for my coffee break in the village of Santa Catalina where we met up with several fellow travellers. On the road again and we met up with Venessa, a young girl from Glasgow, whose path has crossed with ours several times since the beginning of our walk. The next mountain village was El Ganso and boy was it different. It is described as a hauntingly crumbling village and that is exactly what we found. As you walked through there was a sense of yesterday and better times. Then you rounded a corner and there it was, the Cowboy Bar. Believe it or believe it not there was even a saddled horse tied up outside. See the picture on Facebook. Oh and don't mention the toilets to either Mary or Pauline, ever. From here we made the steep climb to the top of Cruz de Ferro and then the gentle descent into the most beautiful village of Rabanal del Camino where we are staying the night. At 7pm we are going to listen to Bavarian monks vespers and Gregorian chant. Tomorrow we climb to the highest point of the whole Camino - 5000ft.  C

1 comment:

  1. Good luck for tomorrow. We will be thinking about you all day xxxxxxx

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