Where there’s a will

I will start, once again, with a thank you. First, to our friends who have kept us entertained and encouraged by the wonderful comments you have posted regularly on the blog, as well as those who have communicated regularly through email and WhatsApp. As we know you will appreciate we have been too busy, just being on the Camino, to respond to all individually, but the sense of you being with us along the Way has really motivated us, particularly on the hard days.

Similarly, we have been humbled by the continuing support we have been receiving through the Hospice fundraising site. Only today, when we arrived at our destination above the Embalse de Grandas de Salime, and established wifi contact, we discovered that Killearn Church Guild, to whom we have given talks in the past, had donated £200 to the Hospice in support of our journey.

And that brings me to today. On previous Caminos, both of which were undertaken in memory of special friends, we have always wanted to mark the high point of the route in a special way. As always I have an overview of the day’s trail in my bar bag map case, and today we included a photo of Pat with the map. Pat was always a fantastic supporter of our crazy journeys and we have missed her regular comments this time. But today she has very much been in our thoughts.

We left early and started from the Camino waymark in Pola de Allande which proudly records the fact that the first pilgrim to Santiago was the Asturian King, Alfonse II, who walked the Primitivo, The Original Way, from Oviedo.

The early morning chill in the darkened and deep valley was perfect for the continuous ascent to the Puerto del Palo. We knew we faced more than 2000 feet of ascent without any relief and set a steady rhythm. We used carefully selected hairpin bends for rest stops as it can be difficult to get started again on a steep gradient; hairpins are usually a little flatter!

Within two hours of leaving Pola we thought we could see the col above us but the route remained steep and sustained. The serpentine route we had followed was still hidden in shadow more than 1500 feet below..

Eventually, around 10 30 am we arrived at the puerto; in 12 kms of cycling my GPS indicated that we had descended one metre, probably when we crossed the bridge next to our hotel as we left! We arrived almost simultaneously with two Spanish walking pilgrims who had left the hotel around the same time as us. They had climbed the same amount but over seven kms rather than our twelve. They kindly offered to take our photo which gave us the opportunity to remember Pat at the high point of our Camino. She and her husband, Peter, would have loved today’s journey.

The puerto offered astonishing, panoramic vistas to all compass points, and was home to a large group of what appeared to be wild horses. The herd included a number of juveniles who were very playful and entertaining. They were completely relaxed in our company.

Then we began our descent into the much drier terrain leading towards Galicia. It is hard to exaggerate the sheer scale and grandeur of the vaulting terrain we had entered. It was almost intimidating in its scale and vastness. We both made much more use of our brakes than usual as beyond the crash barriers were exceptionally steep drops of hundreds of metres.

This area is so high and remote that we had had no opportunity for a coffee stop, and so it was with much relief when we’d arrived at the very high mountain hamlet of Berducedo. We fell into the first bar we saw and ordered two buckets of coffee ( grande in Spanish!) and stretched our legs out of spasm. We even mustered the energy to visit the fourteenth century church of Santa Maria de Berducedo. Our written guide describes it as a “pleasant small town with a lot of livestock”. The posse of tractors bracketing the church seemed to confirm Berducedo’s agricultural prowess!

Despite careful map-reading we naively thought that our plunging descent was over and that, as Linda said, we had entered a more pastoral scene. We could not have been more wrong for the pleasant meadows of Berducedo were swiftly replaced with more alpine switchbacks and impossibly huge drops and vistas until, at last, the dam wall (or is that damn wall?) of the Embalse de Grandas de Salime swung into view.

If you look carefully you can see our hotel (a yellow building) perched on a cliff above the reservoir waters on the far side of the lake. The setting is breathtaking and beautiful. Unfortunately we have to move on tomorrow to Fonsagrada, and to get there we have to cross the Alto de Acebo. Guess how tomorrow starts! Careful readers may be able to spot the road rising up behind the hotel. Time for bed……