We left Villafranca in the early light, before the town was properly awake. The church stood above the rooftops, the stone going gold at its edges, and the river ran low under the bridge we crossed to go. A stone pilgrim stood near the crossing, staff in hand, the cross of Santiago cut into his cape, looking up the valley toward the way we were about to walk.
The way out of Villafranca followed the Valcarce river upstream, and we walked it straight through, the way we have come to like best. No stops and no detours, just the path unspooling along the water while the motorway arched somewhere overhead on its tall legs and we stayed down below with the stone hamlets and the green. After yesterday’s heat, the shade felt wonderful.
What we will remember about today is not the kilometers. It was the people. We fell into step with one after another, in the loose and easy way the Camino arranges these things. Linda. Mark. Clara. Pat. Josh. Names traded on an incline, a story told for the length of a shared stretch of path and then folded away when the pace pulled us apart. So many of them were weeks into their walking, not days. People who had set out from places far behind us and were giving a whole season to the road.
John and I kept catching each other’s eye after these conversations. There was something aspirational in them, in the plain permission these walkers had given themselves to go slowly and go far. We have talked about it before. Today we talked about it again.
We reached Las Herrerías by the early afternoon, where the village lies strung along the river at the very foot of the climb into Galicia. We stayed at Casa do Ferreiro, which means the blacksmith’s house, with its rooms in a wing called La Fragua, the forge. Las Herrerías is named for its old ironworks, and here we were, resting for the night in the forge, in the village of the forges, at the bottom of the mountain.
Lunch was at Casa Polín, a sidewalk table looking out over the street, a serving of lentil soup we split between us, chicken, and a glass of the local white. A Godello grown just over the hills in the country we climb into tomorrow.
Two Dutch ladies we’d met in El Acebo joined us at the table, and over the meal they charmingly undid our plan for tomorrow. Push past O Cebreiro, they said, carry on to Fonfría, it’s worth the extra hours for a special albergue, A Reboleira, where they’d stayed on past Caminos. It turned out to be sold out, but the idea had already taken, and we’d push on to Fonfría regardless. We came to lunch with one itinerary and left with another. So much of this road is decided like that, by someone a little further along who tells you the next good thing.
Later, we walked down to the river. It ran cold and clear over a rocky bed, shaded by the trees, and we sat by it for a while and let the day’s heat go. It took me back to the river I waded into as a child, in the same cold shock and the same ease after.
Tomorrow the valley ends and the mountain begins. Tonight we rest at the bottom of it, already a little changed by the people who walked through our day.
