Editor’s note: Rick McKay, Joe Masonick, and Jack Karolewski, have been travel companions for more than 50 years to a variety of site with with many goals. This week’s adventure is the 17th in the series, a 14-day hike in 2005 across northern Spain’s intriguing Camino de Santiago, known as the Way of Santiago, for a religious retreat and pilgrimage. Visiting various villages on the journey requires continual hiking and climbing.
The previous article is at thevoice.us/celts-romans-pilgrims-understood-religious-climb
By Rick McKay
Day 4: El Acebo to Ponferrada, Monday, Sept. 19, 2005
Indeed we did have a good night’s sleep in our private room. Awoke at 7:45 a.m., the room was pitch dark, only knew it was time to rise by rustling sound of pilgrims on the floor below.
After a cafe con leche and a pastry, we left El Acebo on a rustic country trail with fields of grain on one side and horse chestnut trees scattered along the other. Everything feels so isolated—in a good way. I often feel as though I am somewhere in the 19th Century, not the 21st.
On our way to Molineseca we met John from Ireland. He is a 56-year old roofer on a 33-day adventure. He was very friendly, and put us to shame with his ambition. He started at the French border and has been walking 10-12 hours a day. After traveling in our company for the better part of an hour, he left us in his dust as we stopped to rest.
We keep expecting an end to the quaint villages with the narrow streets, but each village we encounter continues to surprise us with its unique character and special charm. Molineseca is a suburb of Ponferrada, a large industrial city with nuclear cooling towers visible to us from 10 miles away. So we didn’t expect much of this village. But its stone Roman bridge, its narrow main street with colorful flowerbeds from one end of the town to another, its general cleanliness, left a more than favorable impression upon us.
Molineseca was the halfway point of today’s 11½ mile trek and we expected the rest to be fairly easy because we finally had reached what was to be our final elevation. But the heat of the afternoon and the many smaller ascents and descents made us very thankful to finally reach Ponferrada. We entered this industrial town from the south. The Camino goes through the old town past the cathedral and an old Knights’ Templar castle. So we never had the sense that we were anywhere but rustic Spain once again.
After showering and doing laundry at one of the nicest albergues we could expect to encounter, we walked to town. An old man approached us on the street and started a conversation, asking in Spanish where we were from. He said his son was a doctor in Madison, Wis. and that he was familiar with that part of the USA. Again he knew no English, but we communicated well enough with our little knowledge of Spanish. As we parted, he blessed us, saying he loved peregrinos, and then he went on his way.
Though the castle and cathedral were closed for restoration, we stayed in the area and dined outside in the old town square. The ambiance was wonderful. As the sun set, local family members of all ages began to gather, filling the many benches. They visited with one another while their children gamboled about, playing games: Tag, hide and seek behind the bronze statues sprinkled here and there, teasing the pigeons with bread crumbs and then chasing them away. American families and neighbors seem so isolated from one another today, having abandoned old customary ways of communal bonding, like the way small town American farmers used to gather in the evening on Main Street at week’s end and share stories and news with one another. Our experiences in this part of Ponferradaare were another throwback to a bygone era in our own country.
After dinner we returned to the albergue. This shelter has a series of four-bed dormitories, so hopefully we will sleep well again tonight.
Continued at thevoice.us/travels-in-spain-city-and-bucolic