27th of August we woke up early due to the pilgrims leaving during dawn. Something had changed compared to being in the dryness of the Meseta where our bikes and bags collected nothing but dust from the dirt roads. It was so dry that it was no problem to let the laundry hang outside even overnight. This morning a fine layer of morning dew had laid down on our hanged laundry and it was therefore not completely dry.
Luckily there was a garden hose with which we could rinse our bikes, because the fine sand and dust started to find its way into the mechanics and caused grinding sounds you don’t want to hear. There was a Dutch family of which the father and daughter had left already very early while the mother was following them by car later. Robert chatted with her while I got the bikes prepared. She was so nice and gave us some Dutch “ontbijtkoek” so we’d be prepared for times when we’d find nothing to eat. She also had a bicycle pump in the car that we could use.
We had breakfast at a restaurant right beside the Roman museum. There was an excavation of the Roman thermal baths where mosaics could be seen. It showed a well preserved bear as an ornament. We had a look at the Roman museum before we headed on. But the Camino wouldn’t be the Camino if we would not have met another familiar face at the Plaza Mayor. It was Jana from Slovakia who had finally gained her voice back again.
We crossed her twice more that day as we had to find a stamp and a supermarket to get some water to fill our bottles. I further had a moment of shock when I tried to withdrew money and the cash dispenser did not only refuse to give me money but also refused to give me my card back with the message to contact my bank in Germany. Short panic came up but fortunately, the local bank was open at that moment being full of people waiting for their turn. A lady at the information desk was so kind to help me right away and was able to open the machine and give me my card back. She found another card stuck in it as well.
Being out of town we could already tell what the forest fires had left as huge black hillsides. A week earlier this part of the Camino had been closed due to the fires. Fortunately, the Camino itself was not touched by any fires, but it was very dry. As we had seen most of the buildings being built with mud in the Meseta, now they were more and more made out of massive rock. Even the roads in the villages were laid out in rock.
When we got close to the village of Rabanal del Camino helicopters started and landed at a heliport for forest firefighters. We had a lunch break at “Posada el Tesin” where two German guys were already sitting, and one looked exactly like the son Joschi of my cousin Franziska from Hamburg, but this was Jakob from Hamm with Moritz who had big troubles with blisters. I gave him the last one of my “Compeed” plasters, because until now biking didn’t cause any blisters.
While we were waiting for our lunch outside the waitress suddenly recommended us to come inside as our table started to collect more and more ashes from the forest fires. As we enjoyed our spaghetti she was preparing lunch packages and water bottles for the firemen, who would come by later for their lunch break. The forest fires were part of every day life in this area, and we were very lucky that we could continue the Camino.
The higher we got into the mountains the further we could look, and we saw that the mountains on the opposite hillsides were still smoking. At Foncebadon Moritz was crossing our way and was happy with his new plaster. The houses of this the last village before we would reach the highest elevation of the whole Camino Frances were very simple and in an Alpine style. The summit is the Cruz de Fierro at 1.504m altitude. The wind was quite strong up there and you could see how it created dust devils in the burned areas. There was a truck transporting cut wood out of the forests to clean firebreaks, and it could be seen from a far distance with all the dust clouds following it.
From now on we had mostly downhill and it was a completely different landscape into which we could let the bikes just roll without any effort. It is something like flying and gives you the feeling of freedom. It would have been a much better feeling of freedom if there wouldn’t be the aftermath of the forest fires we were passing through. There were villages which must have been evacuated because the fires had completely surrounded them. Now it was just black hillsides surrounding them. Some people got even out of their cars and had a look at what had happened to these places.
There were not many pilgrims along the way anymore, but we met Giulio, a biker from Italy who had biked all the way from Florence with a minimum amount of luggage and a very sportive bike. He had nothing like we had charged as weight on our bikes which would be getting our brakes glowing again. When the road turned into the village of El Acebo de San Miguel, we entered a completely different way of architecture as we had seen before on the Camino. Stone houses were built close to the road like they were cuddling together against the rough mountain climate.
When we came all the way down to the valley at Molinaseca we crossed a bridge and could see that the fires had reached all the way to the houses. It seemed to be like one of the better suburbs of Ponferrada, where they could afford modern villas with a green lawn, whereas outside their fences the dry grass had burned. There couldn’t be any better metaphor to the effects of climate change by contrasting this in one photo. I had the song of Midnight Oil in my mind asking myself: “… how can we sleep while our beds are burning?…” It shows to me very well with which ignorance we try to keep the illusion that everything will be fine and climate change doesn’t concern me as long as my garden is still green.
Reaching the city of Ponferrada we were not attracted at all. It had a medieval castle in the centre, but all the new apartment buildings with many floors had no proportion to the rest of the city. Nothing really kept us staying there. I had to find the Camino again in this chaos and at a little chapel with a U-shaped court yard we had our sandwiches to hold through for another leg through the valley of Rio Cúa. It seemed to be a rich agricultural garden after all what we had seen before.
Farmers were harvesting their grapes from the vineyards. The fruits were hanging from apple, apricot, plumb and quince trees and the smell of figs came in waves as we biked by them.
The sky had dark clouds and wind announcing the weather change and the temperatures were not anymore what we had gotten used to. We found in Villabranca del Bierzo a beautiful little hotel being a Posada, which means it’s located in a historic building. The day had started with the Roman baths and now we really needed a good shower. But also the cars needed to be washed after days of ashes raining on them. We got also a recommendation for the local kitchen at the Mesón do Nacho and were proud of how much distance we had covered that day.
