We’re in the Bierzo region which is famous, amongst other things, for a dish called botillo and for wine. For lunch yesterday we both had botillo, which was described as a sausage and turns out to be the left over pork rib, tail and bones with a little meat stuffed into the pig’s intestines! Very tasty but very rich to the point we’re still not that hungry! Might stick to the other specialty for our last night in Bierzo and the wider region of Castilla y Léon!
Anyway, today was a very nice day spent alongside the rio Valcarce as it worked it’s way down from about 700m to about 550m and we went up! We had a great start, having been told the buffet would be busy until after 8:30am, so come a bit later – a nice sleep in and a bit of a late start but still very nippy as we got away.
The morning was spent mostly in shadow and on great paths alongside the N-V1. The only negative was larger numbers of cyclists – we’re inside the last 200km which is the threshold for cyclists to get their compostela! Soon we’ll hit the 100km mark and will see a similar but substantially greater effect on the pedestrian numbers.
We passed through six villages on the river: Pereje, Trabadela (stopped for coffee), La Portela (stopped for lunch), Ambasmestas, Vega and Ruitelán, the last four in pretty quick succession. The shade had left the valley by La Portela, so the last few km we’re pretty warm!
We’re in another lovely country hotel to cap off one of the best day’s walk so far! 21km today to bring the total to 589km and a very windy video here.
steelewalking 