Okay, okay. Each time we get to a new Spanish city we say it is more beautiful than the last. So, we’ll not try to use comparisons versus others, but Ponferrada was way cool!

But first, the numbers. Today was a 20 miler bringing our 26 day total to 388 miles.  We’ve pretty much walked from Danville to Huntington Beach. Wow!

With a 20 miler in front of us, we wanted to start early, but not spend hours walking in the dark. We left at 8:00, which in these latitudes is still night.

Within 45 minutes, we were on the outskirts of Ponferrada.

Ponferrada has a Knights Templar castle that is fully restored.  Notice the parapets. They look almost Disney-esque.

For us cycling junkies, the world championship of cycling is taking place this week in Ponferrada. This morning, it was the women’s road racing championship. The photo below looks like they are casually riding, but in fact they were moving so fast that I wasn’t sure I captured them in the photo before they were gone!

On leaving Ponferrada, the climate and vegetation once again changed and it looked and felt like we were hiking through Calistoga in the wine county.

We are now literally at the foot of the Cordillera mountain range and will be climbing significantly tomorrow. In addition, the next convenient stop is almost 19 miles down the road. As we look at the guide book, everything after this is much easier, and we only have a week more of hiking before Santiago. Hard to imagine that you can be saddened by not having to hike 15 or so miles every day, but we have loved this journey and will miss it when it is over.

Now for laundry and shower …