Saturday, September 20, 2014

Cea to Lalin






We started the walk today at Oseira, a medieval monastery (12th century) that was continuously used until the monks left in1835. They returned in 1929 and it's still being rebuilt and restored.

Today's route was long – 16 miles – with a lot of up and down, starting with a 20 minute climb from Oseira to the nearby ridge. From there, we were off road for most of the next three hours as the trail wound up and down into and through a valley. The trail was pretty overgrown and wet in a lot of places.Finally the trail climbed out of the valley a joined a highway. The highway may not have been as quiet, but it had some great views down into the valley. And we could eat up some miles walking on the shoulder. 

BTW - because it was so wet, there aren't many pictures from today's walk.

The weather for the first part of the day was overcast, cool, and threatening. But the rain didn't start until we were about 10 miles into the walk. From there, it was a steady rain until we got to the endpoint – the Lalin train station. By then we were as wet from walking in the rain for two hours as we were from walking in the rain all day the day before.

Couple of funny things we learned about the Lalin train station. First, it's not in the town of Lalin – it's about three kilometers outside of the town. Also, it's no longer a train station. It's boarded up.
Fortunately, the Restaurante Estacion was a short walk away. Marty and I both desperately needed a roof, a seat, a beer, and some tapas. Any order would have been fine. And it was fine.

We were an hour and a half early for the cab that had been arranged to pick us up (in spite of the weather, we'd made pretty good time}.
We called, told him where we were, and he picked us up and took us downtown to our hotel.

We had great luck at dinner later that night. Restaurante Parillada Villanueva was highly rated on tripadvisor and was a short walk from our hotel. Marty had the day's special of octopus, and I had probably the best pork ribs ever. Along with a really nice vino tinto..


The dinner was a great way to finish the day, but we were both pretty beat from the long miles and the rain. 

2 comments:

  1. Octopus? I'd walk in front of Marty Tomorrow. Pics are good!

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  2. When the girls were with me in Spain Erin loved the Octopus in it's own ink. She ordered it a number of times.

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