Stage 5: León to Sarria

Via Villar De Mazarife, Astorga, Rabanal Del Camino, Ponferrada, Villafranca Del Bierzo, O Cebreiro and Triacastela

190 km

Apart from the very last section of this stage, we remained in the beautiful region of Castilla y León. The countryside we walked through varied considerably from day to day; a lovely mix of rolling countryside, rivers, more vineyards, canals and in addition some high peaks. The poppies and cuckoos re-appeared as our almost ever-present companions and we witnessed the arrival of a very large number of storks! Literally every village we passed through with a high building (usually the church, but not always) contained at least a couple of large storks nests, with the large long-legged birds sitting on the top guarding their precious cargo. The weather along this section stayed dry; the cold wind of previous stages faded to almost nothing and the temperatures steadily increased. Some days were a little overcast but it was generally sunny and clear. In fact, the conditions were perfect for walking.

One of the highlights of this section, was walking past the iconic Camino Cruz de Ferro. This was a landmark day for us for a number of reasons. Firstly, due to my poor planning we had to start walking that day at 4:30am as I was keen to arrive in time to see the sun rise, and realised the accommodation I'd booked the night before was a two-hour walk away! So off we set, in the pitch black, head torches lit, walking across some very steep uphill stony and rocky terrain, mostly through dense forest. It did occur to me that if we had required assistance or help in any way that I would have had absolutely no idea where we actually were. Thinking I was the only pilgrim with the idea of reaching the Cruz de Ferro at sunrise, I was more than a little miffed to discover, around 6am, a number of people on the path in front of me. I put my head down, my best foot forward and strided uphill as quickly as I could for the best part of half an hour, in order to beat them to the top. My hamstring did not thank me the next day! Needless to say, I still wasn't the first to arrive.

The Cruz de Ferro is a place of prayer and reflection for many pilgrims. It's a symbol of the challenges and hardships that people face on their journey. Many pilgrims come to the Iron Cross to offer a prayer or leave a stone behind as a symbol of their spiritual journey. A lot of people bring a stone with them from home, whilst others pick up a stone during the first part of their Camino. I had carefully chosen a (not too big or heavy!) stone from my garden at home and had written a short message on it the night before. The atmosphere around the Iron Cross was hard to describe, but incredibly special. A number of people stood in silence either with their heads bowed or looking up at the cross, some were praying, some were weeping as they placed their stone, friends and family members walking together embraced each other and a group of pilgrims nearby were reading out loud 'The Beatitudes of the Pilgrim'. We stopped and soaked up the atmosphere for about 3/4 of an hour. I was drawn to stay a lot longer and would have done, had we not had such a long walk to complete that day.

This day also marked the highest point on our Camino journey. Walking over the Pyrenees during our first couple of days we'd reached a height of just over 1,400 metres. The Cruz de Ferro is located at 1,500 metres. We also covered the most kilometres on the same day: 33.5. We experienced steep ascents, quite tricky descents and hot weather. We were also reaching 3/4 of the way through our pilgrimage. I was exhausted on reaching that day's destination and crashed out once we reached our accommodation, sleeping for a couple of hours.

Accommodation was a hot topic of conversation very early on in our journey and seemed to continue as a thread throughout. When I planned the Camino I carefully choose the 'right' time of year. I wanted to start our walk late enough that we wouldn't have problems with snow/ice over the Pyrenees but early enough that the days wouldn't be getting too hot once we were into late May/early June and walking through Spain. July and August are often too hot to walk, unless you start very early in the morning and finish your day's walk by lunchtime. Autumn is another good time to walk, but by the end of October/start of November the weather can become quite inclement, temperatures drop and accommodations begin closing for the winter. So starting on 1st May seemed to be ideal timing.

Other than the timing of when you walk, the next big question is do you book accommodation in advance or not? The most 'authentic' way to walk the Camino is not to book anything, to walk as much as you feel able to every day and then when you're tired, just stop at the next village and stay at one of the albergues along the route. There are municipal albergues (which you can't book in advance) and also private ones (where you can). Prices for a bed for the night, usually in a dormitory of bunk beds ranges anyone from 5-15 euros. Albergues often offer a Pelegrino (Pilgrim) evening meal for around 12-15 euros for a three course meal. Our experience has been that these meals vary from fantastic, to not so great. However, if you're stopping over in a very small village you may not have any other option than to eat at your alburgue. The menu tended to consist of 3 courses: salad or soup to start, chicken, pork, paella or a vegetarian option as a main course and dessert was typically some sort of ice cream, yoghurty pudding or cake offering. All washed down with plentiful jugfuls of local red wine of course. Many albergues also have a communal kitchen so if you can manage to find a shop to buy food then you can use the facilities to prepare your own dinner. Many alburgues offer breakfast, which we never had as we always left too early in the morning and stopped en-route for this after a couple of hours of walking. All albergues have washing and drying facilities available which usually costs around 4 euros per load.

Since albergues are intended only for pilgrims and those walking the Camino, they do come with quite strict 'rules' which sound a little draconian at first but work wonderfully well in practice:

1) You can only stay one night in an albergue and you can't stay for longer (unless you have some type of medical issue which prevents you from walking, but it does need to be quite serious as albergue owners are very strict about this)

2) Dinner is served right on time and you miss it if you're late

3) You have to be quiet and lights out by 10pm. The albergue front door is often locked around 9:30/10pm so woe betide you if you stay out too late because you literally can't get back in

4) Generally you shouldn't be making any noise in the dormitories before 6am so if you do want to leave early you need to have everything ready the night before so you can get up, get ready and get going, making the minimum amount of noise in the process so as not to disturb others leaving later than you. Our head torches came in helpful on these occasions

5) Breakfast is usually served at 7am the following morning

6) You have to leave the albergue by 8am at the latest so the owners can clear up and get ready for the next group of pilgrims checking in

7) You usually can't check in to your next albergue until around 2pm in the afternoon

I was initially a little concerned about the 'being quiet/lights out' rule, but having walked for a number of hours each day I was usually ready to go to sleep closer to 9pm.

So during my planning I had decided to book most of our accommodation in advance. This was primarily to act as an incentive to complete a certain number of kilometres every day, but it's a high-risk strategy given that if you do develop a problem or injure yourself and have to take unexpected rest days, then the whole accommodation schedule would be disrupted. Early on in our walk, I did feel like a bit of a 'fraud' as many people we spoke to hadn't booked any of their accommodation ahead of time; I envied their sense of freedom and spontaneity. However, I very quickly became very grateful that I had, as we soon learnt that the first week of May and the first week of September are the two busiest weeks out of the whole year where pilgrims begin walking from St Jean Pied de Port. The Pilgrim's Office in St Jean this year have reported record numbers of people starting their Camino the same week as we did. Part of this large increase in numbers was thought to be due to the post-pandemic travel catch-up.

Sadly what this did result in, was a daily 'bed race' and we heard of a number of pilgrims who had to walk much further distances than they had planned to, simply to find a bed for the night as the albergues filled up very quickly. Some started to find this daily challenge quite stressful so began phoning ahead to reserve beds verbally, only to turn up to find 'their bed' had been given away to another pilgrim who had arrived earlier in the day. All of that said, after a couple of weeks with people walking at different paces and some taking rest days, the bottle-neck seemed to disperse a little so by the middle of our Camino the accommodation issue seemed to have resolved itself.

Albergues aren't the only accommodation options available on the Camino, but are the main ones. You can also stay in hostels and small basic hotels or if you really don't want to 'rough it' you can choose to stay in a very nice hotel if your destination that day happens to be a main town or city. That said, the spirit of the Camino is to walk in the simplest way possible with as few possessions as possible so the vast majority of pilgrims stay in albergues throughout their journey. You also discover quite a special sense of community sharing your living space and cooking/eating together with different people every evening, which very much adds to the richness of the whole experience.

Most albergues are relatively small accommodating anything from 8 to 50 pilgrims. However, the 'grandest' we stayed in was the 12th Century monastery at Roncesvalles. The monastery had enough beds for 250 pilgrims, split over 3 floors and it was run with military precision! I guess it has to be when dealing with so many tired pilgrims. You had to take your walking boots/shoes off as soon as you walked through the main entrance and place them in a (very stinky) room overnight until you started your walk the following morning. It took 45 minutes to get 'checked in', after which a volunteer showed you to your bunk bed and explained where all the facilities were. The monastery is currently run by volunteers from the Netherlands, who take their job very seriously. Being one of the first albergues we had stayed in, I was surprised when at 6am (on the dot), all the lights on the bedroom ceilings automatically came on. Gentle monastic music then began being piped through the speakers to help you wake up, just in case the bright lights hadn't already done that! Any plans you might have had for a lie-in were scuppered because around 15 minutes later a volunteer walked up and down the aisles of bunk beds calling out 'hello and good morning!' in a sing-song voice in a range of different languages, ensuring that everyone was, by then, very much awake.

We'd had dinner at the monastery the night before. However, rather than dinner being served 'on site', groups of pilgrims were allocated to dinner in one of the local inns or restaurants. The total population of the village stands at 22 and I think only exists to cater for pilgrims walking the Camino. On ordering dinner, you were given a ticket with the name of your restaurant on, and you had to make your way there for 7pm when dinner was served. I was delighted to see that we would be eating in restaurant 'La Posada' where Martin Sheen stayed overnight in the film 'The Way' with his new-found friend and fellow walker from the Netherlands!

I slept a couple of nights ago in the most luxurious of bunk beds! Not only did it have its own light above your head, a little shelf for you to put your belongings, your own power point to charge up devices, but it also had . . . . wait for it . . . . . blinds on either side that you could pull up and down if you wanted a little more privacy or quiet! This differed significantly from most of the basic iron-framed squeaky bunk beds we've slept in during our travels!