Day 30: Villafranca del Bierzon - La Faba, 25.2 km.
Julia caught up with us on the road leaving town and we enjoyed the day of walking along a beautiful flowing river together. Yesterday's walk was a lot of rolling hills and today is more of the same, including a very long steep 8kms up hill at the end of the day. Bryan's knees and Achilles have been reminding him to not push too hard so we decided to walk until we were ready to stop and not push through the hill at the end of the day. Our stop is 1/2 way up!
The day was dotted with small picturesque villages where time seems to stand still. They commonly have one main street and a population of anywhere from 21 - 35 with the exception of Vega de Valcarce which has 600.
Our lovely stopping point, La Faba, has a population of 25 AND a beautiful tiny Refugio where we are staying that is ALL VEGETARIAN!!! A Peregrino meal regularly serves a starter, a main corse, dessert, bread, water, and wine for 10 euro. What isn't standard is vegetarian choices and the refuge is 100% vegetarian. I am so excited…an all vegetarian menu prepared by vegetarians with love…I feel this is heaven sent.
The vegetarian peregrino meal rocked my world. All the guests share the communal table and it was so fun to share stories with fellow pilgrims. After dinner, we all decided we would walk up the hill to see the sunset. There are some clear takeaways from this decision, it either means vegetarian food is truly magical (it is!) or bottomless glasses of vino tinto work as an amazing pain suppressant (it does!). The fact that we are still choosing to walk...uphill, and then downhill, is testimony to something extraordinary was afoot. During the walk, we heard the best story of this couple (pictured below) meeting on the Camino and ending up starting an awesome bar here. I love this town.
