Foncebadon to Ponferrada

This was by far the most difficult and most beautiful day, both, because of the scenery and the steep and unstable descents.  We reached the highest point of the whole Camino at 1505 metres, and then descended over 1000 metres from there via loose rock and sharp shale.  The pictures will tell all!

The village we left, Foncebadon,was very isolated and had no Wifi.  There were many ruined buildings but the popularity of the Camino is bringing it back to life.  Our view from our room window...

 

Below our small hotel was a hostel, and there was lots of laundry activity going on...

We left early, at 7:20, and here's a photo that represents what many of the buildings in this village look like...

Here's a photo of another 3 wrecks!  Two human (check the knees) and one non...

The first part of the trail today wended its way upward to the Cruz de Ferro, the highest point of the Camino, and the place of an iron cross where pilgrims lay a stone that represents their particular burden or prayer that lies in large part behind their reason for walking the Camino.  If you saw the movie "The Way" you will know what I mean.  Here Diane is making her way on the upward trail...

You can see it is once again a perfect day weather wise. When we reach the cross and its piles of stones representing so much human regret and longing, Diane and I each lay a stone we have taken from home.  Diane's stone came from our garden and represented our prayers for our our own family, our children and grandchildren, especially that they would all always live close to the Lord, while Bert's stone - white and with a significant scar - came from our church parking lot and represented some regrets from the past few years and our prayers that our church family of Gateway would be marked with a spirit of kindness, patience, peace, and love as we work together, really together, to serve our Lord and Saviour...

This was a much more emotional experience than we had both expected.  That shouldn't have come as a surprise, given our huge love both for our own family and for our church family.

From this point on, the beauty of our surroundings was enough to make us speechless...

The picture above, repeated several times, reminded me of Psalm 50:10!

We're not sure we'll get much closer to the mountains than this, but I hope you can tell that we are having an amazing and wonderful fun time together!

From here on in, it was all downhill, literally.  The downhills were steep, and came with many warnings. We saw this sign at the top of the hill, meant for cyclists, and concluded that somebody needs a better Spanish-English translator.  Can you figure out what that sign means?

We do know that not only walkers but cyclists as well have died on the Camino, as this monument to a fallen cyclist by the cemetery outside of the village of Acebo testifies...

Almost all of the downhills we experienced today took a lot of time to negotiate.  It was slow going, and the risk of injuries and falls we had been warned about were very real...here's a sampling of what I mean...

Passing through the village of Riega de Ambros, we not only came across a lot of sheep...

...but we also came across a sheep getting a wool cut!

To give you some idea of the heights at which we were at today...

In the picture above, do you see the village below?  

Each of the several villages we went through had their own quaint charms...

 

...and of course a variety of heather could be found everywhere...

We stopped for a sit down lunch in a cafe by the river in Molinaseca, and from there we got the energy to make it the additional 8 kms to Ponteferrada, where you find the recently renovated 12th century Knights Templar castle.  

 We finally arrived at our home for the night 9 hours after we started this day.  We are staying in a very nice little hotel overlooking the plaza.  Here we watched people and people watching people as we ate a simple dinner of salad and fried eggs.  We are tired, but thankful to the Lord for a spectacular day.  It is hard to imagine that it can get better than this!  But we hope it will........

Distance today: 28.2 kms (felt a lot longer than that!)

Time on the road: 9:00

Total distance to date: 584.4 kms

Walking days remaining: 11