Santibáñez de Valdeiglesias

May 16, 2022

I really enjoyed the simple albergue in which we stayed last night. The hostalera was a lovely engaging lady who firmly and pleasantly applied the rules on the albergue. She woke us all up at six thirty this morning and filled the albergue with sound of monks chanting. Then she made sure we were all fed a simple breakfast before kicking us out at eight o'clock.

Looking down the main street - the meson where we ate last night is the first building on the left.

Then it was an hour and a half of hard work covering the steepest section of what remained of the climb.

I hate walking my bike but today I walked two sections of the climb.

Lost in translation. It should read "Steep hill for 15Km"

Once the worst of the climb was over we had some small rollers until we reached the highest point of the Ruta Frances, even higher than where it crosses the Pyrenees. An iron cross has been erected here.

Photo taken by a Spanish cycle tourist who had a whole lot of questions about our bikes and gear - all in Spanish so I hope he understood my replies because I certainly didn't understand all his questions.

From here it was mostly downhill to Astorga where we had a stop to buy empenades for lunch and get slightly lost adding about five kilometers on to our distance for the day.

It's my birthday tomorrow we for the next three nights we will be staying out of dormitories. Tonight we have a nice room in an upmarket albergue about eleven kilometers east of Astorga while the next two nights will be spent in an apartment in Leon. I am looking forward to a rest day.

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 1,821 km (1,131 miles)

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