Day 28 - Monday, 19th May, 2014 - 25.0 km
[Bridge - Villafranca del Bierzo]
[Lessons in puting on a heavy pack One...]
[... 2 ...]
[....3.....]
[and 4]
We were told the weather would break today, but when we got up it seemed fine although quite a bit colder.
It was a day when we could pick one of three routes to our destination La Faba. There were clearly many pilgrims in Villafranca and that meant increased pressure on Alburgue space. We had teased Eila that she seemed to suffer from "Alburgue Anxiety" and would often ask questions, or make coments like.
"A lot of people seem to be passing us"
"Are there other Alburgues, if that one we want is full?"
"Where is the next village, if we can't get a bed there?"
"Everybody seems to be heading for the place we want to get to!?"
[Horse chestnut woods on the way to La Faba]
[Michael - looking up the valley to O'Cebreiro]
[Dropping down to Trabadello for Coffee]
[Racing up the last hill to get the last places in the La Faba Albergue]
Today was no exception. We had a very lazy coffee break talking to an American couple we had bumped into a number of times. This made us later at the end of the day, when we would be doing the final hill to our chosen hostel. This was not helped by a large crowd of pilgrims ahead of us, which turned out to be a large gang of slightly unruly school children, under the care of about four teachers. We then passed this rather lumbering Canadian couple from Montreal, who always booked ahead as they were slow walkers.
"Where are you heading for?" They said. We told them that we were trying to get to La Faba. "Oh, I don't think that will be a good idea as the hostel there only has 17 beds and they refused to let anyone book ahead. Everyone seems to be heading there. You probably won't be lucky because all those people, who said they were going there, were ahead of you." These negative comments hit Eila hard and she looked as she had just been told that her 'supper was in the bin' and it brought on 'Albergue Anxiety'. The last part of the walk, or at least the last 3 km was straight up hill on an old Roman cobble track meandering through woods. Eila set off as if we were in a marathon race and I have to say I was concerned because 'La Faba' was probably my favorite hostel on the Camino and I knew it would meet with Eila's approval. La Faba is a recently converted hostel on a ridge of land overlooking valleys on both sides. It is attached to a small chapel; both renovation and the running of the hostel was by German volunteers; it was run and working to perfection as you would expect. As we walked as fast as we could up the hill, small drops of rain had started to fall and many of the Pilgrims had pulled over to cover their back packs and put on the rain gear - not us, with the determination of Louis Hamilton we took this as an opportunity to power on ahead passing through the school children group. We were not going to sweat up that hill wearing a water-proof, raining or not.
We arrived at the German hostel and I could tell that they had not even opened the overspill dormitory, which I knew was much nicer than the main dormitory in the Alburgue. The German volunteer booked us in and then said "Vill you follow me with your boots and packs?, we are going to a different building". I could not believe our luck; they were opening the nicer overspill dormitory just for us and we had the choice of single beds; not bunk beds for us tonight. With that, a massive rain storm hit with a flash of lightening and thunder. We felt somebody was looking after us today. Once again Eila's "Albergue Anxiety' had been allayed.
Buen Camino.
[La Faba Albergue]
[La Faba Albergue]
[La Faba Albergue]
[La Faba Albergue]
[Michael relaxing in the dormitory - La Faba Albergue]
[Dormitory - La Faba Albergue]
