Day 29 – Ponferrada to Villafranca Del Bierzo
24k – 611k to date
I have arrived in the beautiful and busy town of Villafranca Del Bierzo today and once I showered and cleaned clothes, I was off to see the different parts of town. Everyday when I am about 1k from my home town for the day, I am tired, my feet are sore and I think I just need a rest. My thoughts are that I will clean up and just take a nap till dinner time and not move any more than I have to, but once I am cleaned up, something happens and the tourist in me wants to know where I am and what is here worth seeing. I will say, almost every city, town, village or hole in the wall I have stopped at has something good worth seeing. The large towns I have been in all have beautiful structures, like Churchs or Castles to see, they also have active center city (old town) plazas that draw people for social aspects and trade. The towns and villages always have a nice Church and usually a small town plaza that has a few shops and bars (remember bars are really cafes that serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, they just call them bars over here). Even the one horse hole in the wall places where I have stopped usually have one mercardo (grocery shop) and a couple of bars, it is nice to know where everything is and we always like to scope the dinner prospects out before chosing where dinner will be served.
In this country, I have noticed that the general life style is very much more laid back than in the US. If you want to buy some fruit at the mercardo between 1pm and 5pm, forget it, most businesses take that time as siesta time and close down. Some towns will look deserted during siesta. Thankfully, businesses open back up about 5pm and are open till 8pm or 9pm. One blessing for the pilgrims are that bars usually stay open most of the day. Also, this culture seems to be built around strong social interaction. In town plazas (gathering places like a town square) most evenings, the social activity picks up dramatically. There will be kids playing or running, adults visiting and seniors just observing it all. In general, the Spanish seem like a happy and thriving population, even if the economics over here are still limited. It is almost like they have a block party pretty often in the town plazas.
Speaking of mercardos, we have been in large grocery store type that will rival United or Safeway. From there, the gamut is all across the board. Several days ago, I was in a small village with one market. It was run by a nice little older gentleman, it had three shelves and they were all protected by the owner. If you wanted something, you had to ask him for it, you couldn’t reach over. Also, only two people could enter the store at a time, that created a backlog of pilgrims waiting to stock up our just splurge on a power bar for an afternoon snack. It was actually fun waiting in line just to see what would be left by the time you got in there. Secret was, he had a stock room across the hall and when the shelf was without, he would go get some more to restock. Power bars were at a premium that day. Also, while we were in line, all the town kids came for snacks, but they didn’t wait in line, they just ran in, grabbed their snack and left some money on the table, all the while the little grocer was just smiling and helping pilgrims. Just one example of the patience required to be on this adventure.
Back to today, it was a beautiful weather day. The first 10k was a tromp through the suburbs of Ponferrada, there were four in a row, all nice burbs and this was probably the nicest houses and neighborhoods we have seen. One area, showed it’s wealth by a series of “gardens” that were very nicely fenced plots of maybe 1/3 of an acre and very well manicured. After the last suburb, we headed into the hills and found ourselves in wine country again. Vineyards were everywhere. To the immediate west, we could see the mountains we would go into tomorrow, just after coming out of a set of mountains yesterday. The views were great today and the finishing town of Villarranca seems very nice.
A few more steps down the road
1 Corinthians 10:24
I was able to catch up on your last few days. Enjoying your postings very much. Thank you for your prayers for our family. Kids will return and be with us next Sunday, Oct4. We are anxious to see them. Thanks again and our prayer is for your continued joy in Him as you travel.