Hello, everyone.
It's been busy at Ye Olde Homestead, what with Thanksgiving Day and then prepping for Advent (at church) and Christmas (at home)--that last isn't done yet.
Returning to the pilgrimage, we woke up on October 8 at around 7:30 or so...it had been a very long day the day before...and because one of us (me) takes a while to get going in the morning we didn't get out until at least 0830...which was sunrise in León in early October. It was also around 8 degrees C.
We put on all of our layers and started walking. The way out of town, which we had scanned a little the day before, was nice, only a little wandering in circles and a very friendly local pointed us the right way where the routes split, but after we got out of the subdivisions in the outskirts of the city, it got quite chilly.
Very pretty bridge, this was where we stopped and put on some more layers. Buff under the hood of the windbreaker, yes! And I even got out my gloves for a bit.
The way from León to La Robla is flattish for the first third, steeply hilly for the second third, and then flattish again into La Robla. Very pretty countryside.
We kept seeing other trail signs, all along the way, many saying "Via de la Plata" which confused us a little, but we knew to stick to our own trail. These VdlP signs invariably pointed to an extremely steep and difficult-looking stretch of trail when they indicated another way than our own.
We encountered a map of the overall trail.
There were a number of signs marked "Quatro Valles" showing the way.
This trail mark surprised me. I didn't expect to see the stacked rocks ("keep straight on") here in Spain.
When we got to La Robla, we asked a friendly lady for direction to a place to stay and she told us where to find both of the options. We elected to stay in the one at the exit of the town, very friendly folks, and learned that we were "chicos" (kids). At our age, being "kids" is fine with us.
We discovered that, probably because of lingering habits from the 'rona panic, it was necessary to eat dinner quite a bit earlier than we had thought was customary in Spain. Nonetheless, we found a restaurant that served dinner and ate. (DH told the waitress that I wanted "salad" for some reason, and I really should have spoken up and said, no I want meat and fat. I paid for that reticence the next day in spades.) Then we washing some socks and undies to keep up with our clothing usage. We had only brought enough for "wear one, carry one" and some layers for chilly mornings, so doing at least a little washing wasn't optional.
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