The Albergue de Los Herrerias was a clean and restful place to spend the night. The communal supper was a vegetarian delight and would have been perfect with a little chicken or beef. When we departed in the morning, we were sent on our way by an Albergue volunteer from Colorado. It was her last day and then she, too, was beginning her pilgrimage to Santiago. Today's walk up to O'Cebreiro would be the last challenging segment of the Camino and the village of Los Herrerias capitalizes on this fact by offering a couple of ingenious short cuts. First, you can rent a horse to carry you up to O'Cebreiro and apparently this is kosher with the Pope and the Camino referees as horses have been around since the this whole pilgrimage thing began. Second, you can arrange to rent a bicycle in O'Cebreiro and glide all the way down to Tricastela, 23 km away. Although bicycles are relatively new (circa 1817), they too are a sanctified form of transportation, mainly because they resemble a horse and because the Italians pilgrims find spandex too uncomfortable to walk in.
We started out with a pack of perigrinos, a few of whom were familiar and many, including a Spanish school group, who were new to us. In a short while we had all spread out and we were alone with cows and herd dogs. The trip lived up to everything the guide books promised and we felt like we were hiking to the top of the world. Betty stayed on the inside track and only opened her eyes once or twice to make sure we were still beside her.
O'Cebreiro is a Gallacian village that is right out of an Asterix cartoon complete with thatched stone houses. We stopped for second breakfast and ordered the local specialty, pulpi con cachelos (octopus with potatoes). The waitress was suspicious at first, but once she was convinced that we knew what we were ordering, she went back to the kitchen and yelled at her husband to make a supper entre at 9:00 in the morning. It was delicioso! We continued on a few kilometres down the road to Linares, a sleepy town with a country hotel and a church that leaves its bell tower unlocked.
