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The Good, the Bad & the Ugly...
GOOD : Ponferrada - I could quite happily live here ! Beautiful city, mountains all around, great bars, pintxos, football team on the up, decent comic shop, velodrome (think that Ponferrada are hosting the world track championship in 2014) - what more do you want !
BAD : Ponferrada has a problem with taggers like London has a problem with pigeons. Why anyone would want to scribble their name on some of these historic buildings is beyond me. Graffiti I get, tagging I do not.
UGLY : I have so many insect bites it looks like someone has thrown a pot of strawberry jam at me through a chicken wire fence. Obviously, Englishman pickled in red wine and slowly roasted in the Iberian sun is a favourite of the bugs here.
Soon after we arrived in Ponferrada the heavens opened and for the first time since we have been here we saw rain, lots of it. It ruled the football out and meant that we had no other option than to go on a bar crawl ! The chef at Foncebadon had told us that the pintxos here were great and he wasn't wrong. All kinds of delectables were served up every time we ordered a beer. Seven bars later and we were full.... and slightly smashed ! Collapsed into bed and treated ourselves to a lie in (alarm went off 5.45)
Walking after a night on the sauce isn't recommendable. Todays stage is pretty easy going, passing through nice suburbs of Ponferrada followed by beautiful villages of Camponarya and Cacabelos.
The Camino has got noticeably busier over the last couple of days and on arrival at Villafranca both albergues are full. Fortunately we called ahead - good job as the heavens open again just after we stepped through the door.
Unsure quite how many churches we have stopped by but somehow I'm not getting bored of them. If anything I'm astounded at how grand they are considering the tiny villages they serve. One thing i am beginning to tire of is the set pilgrim menu. Whilst, on the whole the food has been great there isn't much variety from village to village. Therefore whilst writing this I an sat in Plaza Mayor in the rain enjoying a good traditional English staple - pizza !!
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