18/06/22 Saturday
Another early start as we were looking at a hot day walking, mainly on roads, with a possibility of rain storms. The main road out of town was quiet, as you'd expect.

It was a long drag out of town. We tried to get some cash out of an ATM on the outskirts of town, but didn't trust it not give us just 50€ notes.
We were going to walk through Ponferrada, which is quite a large town with many ATMs, which would be good as we only had a few Euros in cash. We walked through the suburbs, passing many abandoned or for sale property, including this terrace of tiny delapidated houses.

We finally walked into town across the obligatory Bridge.

If you look closely, you can see Ruth there.
I'll also add a picture of the view across the valley into Ponferrada.

That's my arty early morning sun shot. I should have edited out the house, but...

I edited this instead for the cat lovers. There are lots of feral cats here. But here they are, waiting to be fed.
We passed by the castle, which was ok as castles go. I was more impressed by this.

If you look closely at the 'trunks' of some of the trees, you will see

that many are metal supports for the branches. Well, I was impressed!
We spent while ducking and diving around town, trying to find a cash machine to give some smaller notes and an open bar, so we could grab a coffee. But more importantly, so Ruth could use the loo!
Walking the Camino really sorts out your life's priorities.
I like the use of murals in Spain, but I also like drain and manhole covers

Ruth is sure there is a food called Ponferrada. We'll see... Anyway murals...

This one is outside a pharmacy and shows their branches between Ponferrada and Santiago.
So we'd sorted out some cash and coffee and headed out of town, following the river. We ended up at the Museum of Energy, which hadn't opened yet. They had some great murals. The building appeared to be some kind of old power station.
Most of today's walk was on either pavement, road or rocky path. This was very hard on our feet. The towns and villages along this part of the route are ribbon development and follow the road. There is a mix of relatively new property and some quite old. There is a huge amount of buildings and land for sale. I'll show some pictures of the older buildings as I like the look and am interested in how they're constructed. There is a mix of stone and Adobe with a lot of hollow brickwork thrown in.
Here's a strange picture taken at a small church on the outskirts of Ponferrada

I've no idea why they've got animal heads.

I've included this picture of a church we visited on the way, signed the book and got a stamp. And that's because the priest passed us in the street, wished us 'Buen Camino' and asked us to visit his church as he was a member of the Confraternity of St. James.

Some time during the day, we reached the below 200k marker.

By the time we reached Cacabelos we were seriously flagging. The first bar was full, so we tried the second one and fuelled up on beer and paella, which was excellent.
Then it was a slow stroll up the street until we reached our hotel. I'll add a lot of photos as it was quite memorable.
The evening meal, the cheap Pilgrims Menu was great.
And our room had air conditioning!

And if you like octopus!
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