Day 24 - Villadangos del Paramo to Astorga

Today was our second longest days walking - 28.6km from Villadangos del Paramo to Astorga.

We could see the general path of our route from the window of our hotel in Villadangos del Paramo the previous evening at sunset. The hills looked difficult but turned out to be fine.

Our previous longest day was the hot march into Pamplona some 20 days ago.

Today, however, we had the fortune of a really mild and cool day and therefore the walking was a lot easier.

Offsetting this was the fact that we were tired, not having slept much the previous night due to an all-night festival in Villadangos del Paramo with music and dancing just metres from our hotel window.

We should have given up hoping that the party-goers would have finished before breakfast and just gone out and joined them!

We ran into a lot of the all night revelers at breakfast at the hotel. Some still drinking beer, some into the coffee and some slumped all over the tables in the hotel.

With the exception of the lack of sleep, we were very impressed with our hotel in Villadangos del Paramo, the Hotel Libertad.

The host and his family were excellent and provided a fantastic pilgrims meal, probably the second best pilgrims meal we have had in Spain. We also purchased a bottle of Marques de Riscal Reserva 2003, which was very, very good.

After our sleepless night, we were late starting and did not get away until 8:30am.

Today's walk was much more varied to those of the previous week, and we walked through towns, farm-land, bush and woodlands. We also had some good ascents and descents to warm the body in the milder temperatures we experienced today.

Our pace was purposely slower in recognition of (i) the longer distance today and (ii) the fact that we are building up to a 33km day on Monday.

We completed the 28.6km in 5h57m for an average pace, door to door, of 4.8km/hr.

We had one long coffee stop at Hospital de Orbigo and had hoped for a second a few kilometres further on but, unfortunately, could not find an open cafe.

The 800 year old bridge at Hospital de Ortega is impressive. It has some 19 arches. In the past, if you wanted to cross the bridge you had to tournament. If you did not want to tournament, then you had to leave a glove as a sign of cowardness and wade the river, not cross the bridge. 


We could see our destination, Astorga, from the crest of a hill about 5km from the city.

It was a long slow march from there to the Cathedral and our hotel, the hotel Gaudi, which overlooks the Cathedral. I expect that we will hear the Cathedral bells all night.

The Cathedral is impressive but really difficult to show in a photo as it is surrounded by other buildings and therefore it is difficult to get a good vantage point for a photo.

Astorga has  long history and was, at one point, a Roman stronghold. On the way to the Cathedral we inspected some Roman ruins dating from 200AD where the floor tiles are largely intact. Wonderful work.

There is currently a 4-day festival in Astorga, a medieval festival. Consequently, there is a festive air and many people are walking around in period costumes.

We had a quick pizza for lunch and now Vicki is catching up on some sleep while I blog.

We are now well into the sixth stage of our eight stage journey from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela and now have only 264km remaining before we get to Santiago de Compostela on August 7.

Tomorrow we have a short walk of 20km to Rabanal del Camino and Monday we have a 33km walk to Ponferrada.