May 18th, Off the mountain to the Templar castle

Brian posting at the moment.
Today went ok with the exception of continuing Blogpress problems and several kilometers of bad rocky trail descending from el Acebo to Ponferrada, where we saw the Templar castle.

The stay in Acebo was really nice and the place we stayed was called a Casa Rural that had only four rooms. Three two bed rooms and one bunk room. Breakfast was self service and we set out for a shorter 21k day to our final stop in Columbrianos at the albergue San Blas.

The picture below shows a 1000 year pilgrim groove worn in the ground. It's probably about 4-6 feet in this area.



The picture below is of a church built right into the side of a hill about 5km short of the castle.



We stopped for a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice in Molinaseca
And met a German man making his 10th Camino in ten years. He and Kelli had a hushed conversation where he expressed his displeasure with how crowded the walk has become, about how taxis now ran mochillias to the next location and what really fired him up was seeing tour busses stop a kilometer or two outside town and let off pilgrims who then trekked into town and the albergues. He said he'd never seen crowds like this year.

Part of the popularity this year is like Kelli said before that the Pope has declared a Year of Mercy



We made it to the Templar castle at about 1125 and found out Wednesday was free admission so this was a bonus. Kelli and I got a quick 2nd breakfast of scrambled eggs and ham then went to tour the castle. The Templar castle is pretty much a storybook castle being built during the 1100s. In 1178 King Ferdinand II of Leon donated the city to the Templars as tribute to their work protecting pilgrims on the Way of St. James. The castle has been remodeled by about 4-5 successive occupants since the Templars abandoned it in 1311 due to problems with folks in Rome.





Yes, the cars look weird in this pano-




Ancient and old are judged different in Spain than at home. But after the 15k downhill today my feet felt ancient and old 😃




The tourist office here is great and allowed us to offload our mochillias so we could tour around for a few hours unencumbered.
After the castle we saw the Basilica de la Encina that is across the street and was built or started in 1573. This qualifies as old.




We hope the tech problems are cured now and Kelli will try to recreate yesterday's posting , all of which was lost in getting what we hope was the fix installed.

So long from Albergue San Blas, we'll be in touch.

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