Astorga

Unfortunately we had to leave the Casa rural guest house we stayed in last night right after breakfast. Below is a picture of us and the rest of the guests having breakfast together.  If you ever find yourself in Villavante, Spain make reservations to stay at Molino Galochas.  We fell in love with the place and the innkeeper's are very gracious. We found out that it's a renovated mill, part of it built right over the river.  It makes sense to me now as they probably used the flowing river water to move the grinding wheels in the mill.  We told the owner if they ever wanted to sell the place to give us a call.

When we left this morning at sunrise it was cold and fogging out for the first two hours and then the sun broke through and ended up being a fantastic weather wise the rest of the day. The first village we came to was Puente de Orbigo on the east side of the Rio Orbigo.  We then crossed the river on one of the longest and best preserved medieval bridges in Spain dating from the 13th century and built over and earlier Roman bridge.  As the story goes a famous jousting tournament took place here in the Holy Year 1434. A noble knight from Leon, Don Suero de Quinones, scorned by a beautiful lady, threw down the gauntlet to any knight who dared to pass as he undertook to defend the bridge (and presumably his honour) against all comers.  Knights from all over Europe took up the challenge. Don Suero successfully defended the bridge for a month until the required 300 lances had been broken.  Together with his trusted comrades he then proceeded to Santiago to offer thanks for his freedom from the bonds of love and for his honour, now restored!  Wow, and to think all we did was walk peacefully over that same bridge and thru the next village of Hospital de Orbigo with any problems! Below is a picture of the bridge about half way across.

For the most part the walk today was pretty pleasant; a little over 13 miles with rolling hills.  We did run into a lot of rocks on the path which can be taxing walking over and trying to dodge.  There was about a good two miles today where the knats were out in full force.  Lee kept trying to swat them away and I accidentally inhaled one. Oh the challenges of the trail...you never know what your going to run into next!  Below are several pictures of various pilgrim statues taken along the way today. I have yet to find a statue of a female pilgrim, but I know there's got to be one as there are just as many females on the trail (if not more) as males!

For the most part the Spainards are very nice. While walking through one of the villages today a woman gave us both a couple of apples that she had just picked. They wish us a good walk (Buen Camino) and smile at us a lot.

As we came over the last hill today there was a large stone cross on the side of the hill with the town of Astorga in the back ground. We hope you enjoy the pictures from today. Tomorrow we're off to Rabanal Del Camino and only 162.4 miles to Santiago!