Camino de Santiago – Acebo to Molinaseca and Rest Day

Acebo to Molinaseca

Daylight savings finished last night which means its light that bit earlier but also darker earlier too, so less time in the afternoon to go exploring.

Leaving El Acebo I had to tackle the rest of the downhill that I started yesterday. Felt good today after the emotions of yesterday and the scenery was fabulous, it’s so nice to see trees again. Started out walking on the road which was relief from the rocks which requires a fair amount of concentration and care.

The village of Riego de Ambros was just gorgeous and it took me ages to get through it as I kept stopping to make photos. The Chapel of San Sebastian was so simple and pretty and there was a ‘fixer-upper’ for sale just across the road. It would great to do up one of these old buildings into a small boutique B&B for pilgrims.

Some more rocky sections that require care to traverse and some steep sections thrown in. The steepest sections usually end up being the rockiest just to keep you on your toes….literally. I was surprised at one point to realise how high up I still was, which meant I still had a lot of downhill ahead of me.

Molinaseca is a very pretty village that has been done up over the years and is close enough to Ponferrada that people come up for Sunday lunch. It was a short day for me (only 8kms) and coming into town well before lunch and being finished for the day, with also a rest day here tomorrow was a bit weird. Managed to run into a few people who were all just leaving. I had just finished second breakfast sitting in the sun overlooking the medieval bridge when Sioux, David and Anna-Louise turned up. Chatted and laughed with them for quite a while until they had get moving again.

Did a wander around the village and read for a while.

Molinaseca – Rest day

As I mentioned, Molinaseca is a very old and very pretty village but it isn’t very big (population 800) and once I’d done a lap of it, I was pretty much done….and that was yesterday. I really wasn’t sure why I had a rest day here when another 8kms further on was Ponferrada with a population of 70,000. I would rather have had two short walking days. Anyway, it is what it is, so I had a lazy day and filed my nails. Sad but that was really about the extent of it, without a laptop charger, I couldn’t blog or do photos….grrr.

I realised I only had two weeks left to go. At the start, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do this and here I am nearing the end. I wasn’t sure that I would have the stamina/ability /training to cover the distance. When you talk about the Camino it’s all about the 800kms and that’s probably why I had so many doubts. But once you start walking, there is no thought of how much further you have to walk or how far you’ve already walked, your only concerns are how far you are going on any given day because the rest doesn’t matter, that is, until the halfway point. Then it seemed to take on a life of it’s own and distances became the hot topic; some had to know how much further we had to walk everyday and for others with return tickets they had to start planning how far they needed to walk each day to make it to Santiago in time.