Last night we stayed at Molinaseca which was a 5 km walk from Ponferrada. We were in Ponferrada before 9am – enjoyed a breakfast and set out to explore the city. Which we did – interesting by the end of the day my garmin watch had recorded 30 223 steps (23.4km). The following extract from Garmin is missing the first few days (from 30 Aug to 4 Sep) but is interesting – I will do more analysis when I have a laptop to work on …
Yesterday we walked the 7km to Crux de Ferro and then arranged a taxi to avoid the very steep and dangerous downhill. This was a wise decision – the number of injuries resulting from this 17km stretch is scary – it is not as all bad but the bad bits are really bad. In spite of missing these crazy bits we still walked 16 944 steps (12.6km). Felix from Molinaseca does a great taxi service (+34 681 20 04 66).
The major attractions in the city were the castle, street art, graffiti & statues. Pursuing these provides great incentive to explore and get to know the city.
The Templar Castle is a major attraction of Ponferrada and well worth the visit- pilgrims get a discounted rate on presentation of the pilgrim credencial.
The street art is impressive and mostly with strong messages this is one example – Jules will be publishing a full display of street art in the camino journey
The statues are well executed but difficult to capture n the right light
Legend has that a templar knight found a statue hidden in a tree that dates back to 450AD – it had been hidden by clergy during Moor raids
More info in castle and legends can be found at https://www.senditur.com/en/point-of-interest/castle-of-ponferrada/
We decided to change our route to Santiago and get off the camino Frances and to move into the camino invierno. Even though the invierno is harder, longer, (3 more days of walking), has less infrastructure, and we will not get the certificate (Compostela) for the miles covered. It has less people which is very attractive.
We believe this to be the right decision.
We are grateful to have the flexibility to change plans.