Day 16 - the end
This was the day we reached our destination. I still do miss being on the road
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can you explain the journey? where did you go from and to? really fascinating
Disclaimers - Sorry both that it’s taken me a week and that I probably typed way too much cause I love talking about this. Also my project on this has maps and stuff if you want a visual of the places.
I had wanted to do a study abroad trip but it took a while to find one that would work (they were still recovering from covid too I think). I happened to stumble into a talk on the one I went with on my birthday and it really caught my interest. In late May I flew from the eastern US to Madrid. We spent about 3 days going around the city before getting on a train to go northwest to Leon. We spent the night there and shipped everything but our backpacks forward. The first day was west from Leon to Mazarife. Most of the start was getting out of Leon and then the rest was along basically farm roads. We stayed in a hostel each night and this one cooked a big lunch for us. The next day was Mazarife to [Hospital de] Orbigo, which had the renaissance fair and jousting (a lot of celtic ancestry in the area). Then Orbigo to Astorga, which on the way we started to encounter hills. Astorga is an old Roman town so there were cool ruins there. Next was Astorga to Rabanal, it downpoured right as I was getting to town, but I was able to escape a lot of it by hiding under buildings and umbrellas. After Rabanal was the first really big day over the mountains to Molinaseca. Loads of great views and interesting stuff along the way, but the town of Molinaseca is also adorable and I spent a lot of
time out in it. I also got caught directly in a thunderstorm on the way down towards it (me and a couple of people thought we could beat it lol). The next day was the easiest, from Molinaseca to Ponferrada. Ponferrada is more of a city so it had lots to do and a cool castle. Then was Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo. It wasn’t an especially long day but it felt like it after the previous one and it was super hot. There was a river we swam in in town though which was nice. Out of Villafranca del Bierzo we went straight up into the mountains (like really right out of town the trail goes up) and then back down and along the valley to Las Herrerias, which was hardly a town so we just crashed for the evening. The next day was shorter but had a lot of climbing. Las Herrerias to O Cebreiro, crossing from Castilla Y Leon into Galicia in the process. O Cebreiro was another wonderful little town perched on a ridge that I loved a lot. This is day 10 I believe, O Cebreiro to Triacastela, a very hilly day. Unfortunately there were not three castles in Triacastela nor was there really much else that I could see. Next was Triacastela to Sarria, which was another just standard day but Sarria was a neat town. It’s also the place a lot of people start because it has a train station and is closer to the end, so from then on there are more crowds on the trail. From Sarria we went to Portomarin which is a pretty town over the Miño river with a huge bridge to walk over. This was also the day
we passed the marker signifying 100km left. The next day was Portomarin to Palas de Rei, I don’t remember anything particularly special other than it just being long. The following day was the longest though, 30k from Palas de Rei to Arzua, which is also just a blur now in my mind aside from one final, brutal hill that came around the start of the last mile. After Arzua was our last town O Pedruzo, and I think walking down from the town to the hostel at the end of that day was when my right leg started to act up. The last day of walking finished in Santiago de Compostela. I don’t think it was a particularly long day, but the end was rough because my leg was stiff again and I had to rush a little because they do a service at the big cathedral at 12 and I didn’t want to miss it for the day. Then I was in Santiago for a couple weeks for some language classes at their university. I took two extra trips during this time, a day trip down to Villagarcia de Arousa to go to the beach there, and a weekend trip down to Porto in Portugal. When I was in Portugal they had a festival going on which was really cool to see, and Porto is just a really great city in general too. At the end of June we left Santiago to head back to Madrid for a couple more days to wrap things up. That’s where the study abroad ended, but I took my own trip over to Andorra alone. There’s no direct train there, so I took the train from Madrid to the city of Lleida where I then caught a bus up to Andorra la Vella
(though it was not that easy, my train arrived ~10 minutes behind schedule so I was stranded until I could buy another bus ticket). The drive up into the Pyrenees was beautiful though. I spent the night in Escaldes and in the morning I walked up into the Madriu Valley which was really steep. I came down early out of fear for missing my bus somehow (my flight was the next morning) but I got to walk around the capital for a bit which was nice. From there it was retracing my way back to Madrid where I had booked a hotel right outside Atocha station. I mention this because I had thought I could then also hop on the metro the next morning to take that to the airport, but the line that was there was shut down so I had to lug all my things over a mile across the big park to get to the right metro stop. I don’t know if this all is what you were looking for, I don’t know if this is too specific or not enough, but if you have more questions I’d love to answer them. I’m honestly not trying to plug or anything either but this project might be useful too for more stories and showing the locations https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/887191826/
that’s awesome! you should’ve taken a small detour to Switzerland though :) no but seriously that is so cool, thanks for sharing