Up, Up, and--O Cebreiro!

Hello, everyone.

We left Perejes a little earlier than usual--happens when you get waked up suddenly to bright lights--and followed the trail as best we could for a while. It seemed like forever--not a lot of yellow arrows along that route, but a lot of normal town signs and road-number signs. It twists a lot, with ups and downs, and sometimes you're walking left and uphill, but you can see ahead of you that someobody else with a pack is going right and downhill. It was definitely an exercise in trust to keep going!

About 8:30 we encountered a truck stop, with cafe leche, bathroom, and ham-and-cheese bocadillo. I almost fussed about the price of the sandwich, but when it came it had probably twice or three times as much of the nice ham as the cheaper ones always did. I was glad I hadn't backed out of it then. And having breakfast on board made the ensuing hour or more of confusing, twisty roads and trails more bearable. A lot of this morning's early walking was on the roadsides of small asphalt roads, instead of on a trail alongside of the roadway. The many small villages are lovely.

I had been wanting a taste of pulpo (octopus) since the day before, and also really wanting to find a tee shirt to wear. (The lightweight woven shirts worn day after day were proving to be a little less comfortable than expected.) Ponferrada had not had any tee shirts that I liked--the shops had some black ones and some heavy ones, but nothing I could face wearing if the day got hot. I had also had an intention to pick up the Franciscan credencial in O Cebreiro and collect sellos (rubber-stamps) recognizing the 800th anniversary of St. Francis's pilgrimate to Santiago. But in the end, one out of three was all I got--and grateful for that one.

A Pieta in folk style.

View from ancient bridge.

We made it all the way to the top! It was about a 2,000 foot tramp up the rocky goat track.

Traditional Galician Celtic house. Note thatch and monster-sized stone lintels.

View from O Cebreiro

Cows checking out our snack of salted nut mix and sodas. (Linares)

The path the cows headed down en route to their barn.