Day 32 – Las Herrerías to O’Cebreiro

I’ve been looking forward to today for quite a long time and it did not disappoint. If yesterday was a day in the valley, today was definitely a day in the mountains, climbing over 600m in just over 9km.

We started early – breakfast started from 8am and we (always) have to get our bag out by 8, so we decided we’d eat and get going, despite it being a short day. It turns out everyone else had the same idea and the breakfast room was overflowing with guests!

It was very chilly to start as we followed rio Valcarce past Las Herrerías until we basically ran out of valley and started climbing. Spending time in the Camino give you time to see how people behave under different circumstances and one such circumstance is when, perhaps after many kilometers, you catch up with a group. Our experience is that, despite the obvious fact that if you’ve caught up to them then you’re walking just that little bit faster than they are, people will speed up to stop you passing! It happened twice on the way to the first village, La Faba, where we had a lovely coffee!

On offer today was the opportunity to ride a horse from Las Herrerías up to O’Cebreiro, which sounds very nice. The not so nice part of that idea is that the rest of us have to walk through horseshit all day, sometimes mixed with a bit of residual moisture to make a very disgusting slop!

Anyway, the views today trumped any and all negatives as we made our way to Laguna de Castilla. Not long after Laguna, we passed into Galicia and then on to O’Cebreiro just before 12noon. It is a beautiful and historic village and there were three tour buses there as we arrived, creating absolute bedlam. However, they disappeared after a while and the peregrinos now have the place to ourselves and we literally and metaphorically feel on top of the world!

O’Cebreiro is the final resting place of Don Sampedro, the parish priest who helped restore and preserve the Camino for the modern pilgrim, including the familiar yellow arrow that marks “the Way”.

Only 9km today but each very, very nice. 598km so far and tomorrow we will reach the last of the four peaks on the Camino Francés (we’re only 15m below it now!) and start the descent towards Santiago. The route video is here.