Through deserted villages

Once more found myself leaving the albergue to Venus fading in the east.  Fortunately the restaurant on the main street was open and serving coffee.

The next few miles were very beautiful, but a little depressing as well – every 3-4 kilometres the camino would go through a once thriving but now mostly shuttered up and largely deserted village, often with some roofs beginning to collapse.  The churches were mostly handsome, but I was surprised at Entrepeñas to find a really ugly tower, partly made up of what looked like breeze-blocks.  As a compensation, the water from the nearby fountain was the best I’d tasted for ages.

The few people I did see were almost always retired.  Each village had its church and its fountain, but no bar or shop – it was Palacio de Sanabria, almost 20km after leaving Mombuey that I got my next cup of coffee.  Palacio seemed thriving, with people or all ages, bars, shops and unshuttered houses, unlike the four or five previous villages, and for no obvious reason – perhaps an energetic mayor, a good school, or just luck?  Presumably its success has contributed to the other villages’ decline, as the malign influence of a new Tesco’s can contribute to the closure of independent butchers and grocers.

On the N631 past Otero de Sanabria for the first time in 700km the church fountain had no water – which could have been worrying in the heat a couple of weeks ago, but I had a ¼ of a litre left to get me to Puebla de Sanabria and it was a cool afternoon (my water consumption has dropped from 6-7 litres a day in the heat to about 2-3 now).  In the church porch was a plaster relief of seven sinners merrily burning in hell, and a couple of smug saints (Peter with his keys and, I think, John – an epistle and a sword).  The doors into the churches had blocked off cat holes.

Seven sinners burning merrily in Otero

Got to Puebla de Sanabria, a handsome town dominated by a fortress and a fortress-like church on a cliff above the river.

Puebla de Sanabria

In the evening I climbed up the vertiginous staircase from the river up to the floodlit castle and had dinner in La Posada de la Puebla, the excellent restaurant on the square behind the castle, where I enjoyed a warming caldo gallego and a veal stew with ceps.