Day 30 Walking The Camino De Santiago – Villafranca del Bierzo to O’Cebreiro

We had an awesome stay in Villa Franca Del Bierzo. Albergue Ave Fenix is maybe the epitome of how an albergue should be. The hospitalero Jesus is the longest serving hospitalero on the camino de santiago.

He has a team that works with him there and there is a great sense of camaraderie there between them all. His right hand man looks like the actor Gene Wilder and has the same cheeky smile.

We were given a room for ourselves and a heater to keep us warm as we were up in the hills and it was cold. We told them that we were vegan and so Jesus made a huge vegan stew for everyone.

We stood around the table and Jesus said an old camino prayer, before we sat down to eat. The whole thing was truly amazing. These people really came fromt he heart and it showed.

The next morning we were offered as many bananas as we wanted to take with us for free. Before we left they looked at my enormous rucksack and offered to take it to the next albergue. they told us that it was 28km up a mountain and we would suffer with everything we had.

It is not like we hadn’t suffered in the past. the worst of it we had come through I thought, but a few of the other guys jumped at the chance to have their rucksacks taken up the mountain so we happily accepted as well.

This meant that I carried Indigo and Toria only took a small sack with some essentials in it. We set off walking through the very picturesque town of Villa franca del Bierzo. It was beautiful actually.

We saw a road called calle Prim, which reminded me of Paulo Coelho’s book “The Devil And Miss Prim” It made me wonder as there were many things along the camino that reminded me of various books written by Paulo Coelho.

I wonder if he didn’t walk the camino would he have ever made it as an author. His book “The Pilgrimage” about The Camino De Santiago was his launch pad and to me it seemed that he gleaned much of his inspiration and ideas from the Camino De Santiago.

That day was an enjoyable walk until after about 20km. I thought that we had walked further and were almost there, but it turned into an epic walk along the camino.

The weather turned cold as we gained altitude and the rain came in. There was snow on the ground and we had to dig deep to keep going.

We arrived at a village nestled in the mountains which we thought was O’ Cebreiro, our destination, but it was not to be. We could have stayed there but my rucksack had been taken to O’Cebreiro and getting there would also make the next days walk more doable as it would get us through the mountain range.

Another 4.8 km to go was written on a sign. This was disheartening as it was now dark and we were cold, wet, tired and hungry. At 2km to go the mountain started to plateau and I felt a surge of spiritual energy which encouraged me to chant some Indian and Taoist mantras.

We walked throught thick cloud to finally arrive at this small village on top of a mountain range called O’cebreiro. It was quite surreal.

P.S.We are able to take a month out to walk the camino as we earn a passive residual income online. Want to do the same? Just click below to find out more.