This was another moderately challenging hike which somehow has become the norm in this Camino Primitivo. It was fairly long at 28 km and with a slow and steady climb at the beginning towards the Acebo Pass. The highlight of day 7 was crossing the border from Asturias to Galicia, the prickly proprietor at Bar Acebo (hilarious experience!), and the juiciest most fulfilling lunch at Meson Catro Ventós in Barbeitos. This became crucial as after lunch, the final stretch of the day involved a steep climb into A Fonsagrada!
Route overview and statistics
| Distance 27.8 km | Average speed 4.6 kph |
| Maximum altitude 1121 m | Ascent 836 m |
| Minimum altitude 553 m | Descent 535 m |
We left Grandas de Salime just after dawn. Mommy had her classic coffee and Korean pot noodle for breakfast (her stash of pot noodle was depleting fast!). It was a beautiful morning, the fog added a certain mystique and serenity to the countryside landscape. We encountered another tin man, this one lived his previous life as a lawnmower it seemed, and now he was guarding his station outside Capilla del Carmen.
As we began to ascend some hills, we were rewarded with our favourite weather occurrence, cloud inversion! We stayed on this path as we head towards Castro.
Castro
Castro is a small hamlet just 5 km from Grandas de Salime. There is a dog friendly youth hostel where it is also possible to camp, or a luxurious casa rural. The main attraction here is the castro, as the name suggested!
We had a quick stop and 2nd breakfast at the albergue “cafe”, the hospitalera told us she wanted to visit Scotland in NOVEMBER. Mommy tried to persuade her that it isn’t the best season weather-wise but that was the only time off she had, so we wished her a good trip to Scotland!
Castro de Chao Samartín
A hillfort with archaelogical evidence of village life since the Bronze Age, the site and adjacent museum can only be accessed with a guided tour. It is open everyday except on Mondays.
If you are planning to stop in Castro rather than Grandas de Salime, this would be something interesting to explore, so make sure you check the hours of the guided tour beforehand!
Peñafuente
Leaving Castro (alt 680 m), we continued a steady climb for the next 5 km to Penafonte/Peñafuente (alt 843 m). The last stretch to this village was along the AS-28 highway with very little shoulder, so be careful especially if you are walking with your pup! This is another good place for a quick stop as there is a water fountain (as the name has suggested) by the church. After all, with a view like this, it seemed that God had wanted us to stop and take a moment in (or at the very least, to catch a breath)!
O Acebo
After that rest stop, the path only became steeper as we slowly made our way to crest the Acebo Pass! The windmills were quite noisy, similar to the ones at Alto del Perdon. They had been in constant sight while walking for days and we couldn’t believe that we would actually BE there!
Soon after, we arrived at the unofficial border between Asturias and Galicia! It was marked by a trail of stones and the first camino marker in Galicia was notably different, in that the direction of the shell is now reversed! You follow the direction of the rays as they spread (Galician way), NOT the point where they converge (Asturian way).
There is a reason Mommy insisted on collecting as many stamps/sellos as possible – by the end of our Autumn Camino my canine credential had extended to a 2nd volume – it is because some memories are just so bizarre that we don’t ever want to forget, haha!
So we arrived at the first bar in Galicia, Bar O Acebo, very original name. Mommy was keen to have the first caña of Estrella Galicia as close as possible to the border, so she stepped into this rustic somewhat Celtic bar. The proprietor was a man looked to be about 100 years old. He was serving a group of local men who seemed to have been there for a while and had left a tab. Apart from Mommy, there was a group of Portuguese pilgrims and soon after another Camino group/”Kevin’s group” also arrived and they appointed Javi to do the ordering while the rest of the group waited outside.
Suddenly the man was reprimanding the Portuguese peregrinas and they stepped back, Mommy wasn’t sure what happened. But they told her to stay where she was “in the queue”. Soon the man asked her what she wanted, so she asked for a caña of Estrella. “No hay”, he didn’t have it! So she pointed to the bottles on the shelf, she’d go for a bottle then. No, those bottles were not cold so he couldn’t serve them. Okay… so she had a caña of Mahou, not as good, but it was cold. She also pointed at a cold and chewy slice of empanada, it was the last slice and she needed the protein from the tuna. I could eat the chewy crust if Mommy didn’t want!
As she sat outside gnawing through the 100-year old cold empanada, there was a raucous from Kevin’s group because apparently Mommy bought the last food in the bar, so now there was nothing left for the rest of hungry pilgrims. Hehe, that’s why I dragged Mommy down the hill quickly! But Mommy realised she had forgotten one important thing.
So she returned inside with our credentials, queued again. Javi was still waiting for his 4 beers and a lemonade. Apparently one of them had wanted coffee but he realised the beans still had to be picked from Guatemala, so he went with the group vote of cold caña of Mahou. The man had disappeared, apparently he had to get the cold lemonade from the fridge down in the cellar (or maybe just the cold cellar, because it seemed the fridge was no funciona?). When he returned, Mommy tried in her politest Spanish to ask for a sello, he told her to have the credentials laid out on the corner table while he retrieved the stamp. So everyone also followed and opened their backpacks and lined up behind her. The man thought she had just wanted one sello, even though she had our credentials stacked, so she had to call him back and he was already annoyed. So he was even more annoyed when he looked up and saw he had to stamp another dozen or so credentials 😀
When Mommy returned to our table outside, she saw the man flipped the sign at the door “Cerrado“. Closed. Other pilgrims we met later told us the bar was closed when they passed, and 2 days later we had other friends who passed the same spot and the bar was (still) closed.
“Pilgrim, you have arrived in Galicia” is what the sello says, it’s actually one of the more beautiful stamps and certainly one with the best story to tell (yet)!
Barbeitos
The next 6 km to Barbeitos went like a slug. The landscape was dry and exposed to the element, namely sun and wind. Or perhaps after the other “highs” of the day, this stretch just felt like an unwelcome comedown. The only thing that kept us motivated was the constant sign of “Mesón Catro Ventos (bar restaurante)” indicating a dwindling distance to Barbeitos.
It was definitely a windy place but luckily the outdoor terrace had an awning and glass wall to hold off the dust from the road. Mommy ordered chuleton (T-bone) from Galician beef, this was the restaurant specialty. The meat was sourced from their own farm, another KM0 gastronomy. Kevin’s group arrived after us and they too ordered FIVE pieces of chuleton, these juicy cuts were grilled in a traditional oak wood grill.
We felt a little bit embarassed because apart from our pilgrim groups, the restaurant clientele seemed to be very well dressed, they looked like families who just returned from Sunday mass and was dressed in their Sunday best! So we were placed either outside or at the bar, avoiding the slightly formal dining room. Our waiter was so kind and polite, he gave me a big bowl of water! But poor him, he had lost his voice, and still had to work and take our food orders.
We had a French pilgrim who sat with us, Mommy referred to him as François Mitterrand. He never formally introduced himself nor was he introduced by mutual pilgrims (they had also forgotten) and as we first met him in Borres, 3 days ago, Mommy felt a bit embarassed to ask his name by this point. He had gone the wrong way once and Mommy had to shout in very bad French to get him back on track. He was whistling and humming in his own little world like Georges Brassens! So Mommy assumed, he only speaks French. Hence over our lunch table, we had Indonesian, English, and Swedish pilgrims (attempted to) converse in French with Mitterrand and order food in Spanish to our voiceless camarero, when all of a sudden Mitterrand spoke decent English to the waiter!
At the back of the photo was our Swedish friend’s hands amazed/surprised at our lunch! Of course I got the best part, the bone! We definitely needed all the energy to make the last quick but steep uphill into A Fonsagrada!
Note: from Barbeitos, the track was a gradual downhill, losing 100 m altitude over 4 km until we reached the outskirts of A Fonsagrada where we faced a 130 m uphill in just 2.5 km. Perhaps it was more of a mental challenge as this was the last ascent into the town.
A Fonsagrada
A Fonsagrada is a cute little town. It is famous for the sacred font (as the name says) where the legend tells that St James himself was credited with a miracle of turning a widow’s jug of water into milk to feed her young children.
We met some friends who had already washed and was enjoying cafe con leche in the sun (but they didn’t have the tasty chuletón), and I met another fluffy local dog, similar to the one in Berducedo. In fact, this dog was also near the same pilgrim from the Czech Republic, and he asked if the same dog had been following us since Berducedo (!).
Accommodation and cost
We couldn’t stay in A Fonsagrada for very long. Mommy initially had booked a room in Complejo O Piñeiral, but they had to close for a few days due to a leak, and reopened the next day (!) just our luck. So the only place to stay was in a campsite (Camping A Fonsagrada), which unfortunately was out of town by another 2 km. Only the bungalows were open, and we got one that was very rundown – ripped chair cushion, exposed electrical wires in the SHOWER which tripped the electricity when the room reached a certain humidity level, and a sofa that looked like someone had a violent encounter there. And the hospitalero grabbed a blanket to cover the sofa so my hair wouldn’t get all over it! Oh the irony. There was no wi-fi and the bar was closed. There is an outdoor swimming pool but that too was not open in October. A bungalow here cost €54 per night and we had much better deals on the Camino so far for less.
Anyway, the highlight for Mommy was that she didn’t burn the bungalow down (!) and I had tasty omelette for breakfast. By this point, Mommy was questioning why she had to carry dry dog food for hundreds of kilometres when I ate steak and omelettes and snacked on bananas and carrots.
Reflection on day 7
Mommy felt quite exhausted after today’s hike. The morning had been very “exciting” with beautiful landscape, cloud inversion, and so many “highlights” like crossing over into Galicia, the old man at the bar, the “lost” Frenchman, and a very good lunch. After lunch it was just a slog because everyone was a little bit tired, it was hot, and we just didn’t like having another hill to climb! So I was glad I could help keep Mommy stay motivated!
On hindsight, we were glad we didn’t have to continue on to Complejo O Piñeiral. Mommy thinks if pilgrims with dogs want to stay there instead of A Fonsagrada, they should start in Castro. Yesterday was our “rest day” it was such a short walk – we were moving for only about 3.5 hours, hehe. So we definitely could have made it into Castro.
I guess this is one of the downside of doing a Camino with me (!). We had limited options where to stay, so our routes were mostly dictated by the places we could find to stay. Sometimes we also had to stay separate from our friends but I never mind private times with Mommy and she also doesn’t mind!
From tomorrow, the weather forecast didn’t look promising at all. It looked like a lot of rain all the way until we reached Santiago. A proper Galician welcome. Oh well!
