21st May 2024 Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo

Today we elected to go to visit the Templar castle as it was shut yesterday on our rest day.  As it didn’t open until 1000H we had an easy start to the day and wandered around the outside of the castle on the river side.  It was very interesting to see the structure from the bottom and you can see very easily how difficult it would have been to breach the castle and overwhelm the forces there.

A bit of history:

The castle was originally a hill-fort and later became a Roman Citadel.  It was one of the largest fortresses of north-western Spain during the Middle Ages. In 1211 Alfonso IX makes peace with the Knights Templar and donates the village of Ponferrada to them. In 1226 the Knights Templar had already fortified the village and had extended it to use as an inhabitable palace and for protection of pilgrims on the way to Santiago de Compostela.

The castle consists of a large polygonal enclosure (more than 8,000 m2) with double and triple battlements, turrets, rooms and a large low courtyard or albacar. Some of the most outstanding features are the entrance which involves crossing the moat on a drawbridge and large towers with crenellations joined by an arch.  The original twelve towers reproduced the shapes of the constellations.  The Knights Templar stayed until 1312 leaving behind a magnificent library which contains almost 1,400 books including facsimile editions of works by Leonardo da Vinci.

While we were waiting for the castle to open we headed back to our quirky bar for breakfast.  Over to the castle at 1000H and it is a huge place to walk around with many turrets, walkways and people!  There were huge groups coming in behind us so we probably rushed our visit a bit to stay ahead of the crowd.  Thoroughly interesting place but we were ready to leave by about 1130H.  As we had lost almost 4 hours of walking we already knew we would need to taxi on to catch up to where we would have been so we headed across the river towards the more modern part of town assuming it would be easier to find a taxi down there.

Eventually Google Translate came to our aid when I asked a lovely woman in a café if she could help.  She got a young man (maybe her son) to lead us to the taxi stop almost a kilometre away.  He was lovely – couldn’t speak any English so I used Google again to thank him so much for his time and to say he was very kind to show us where to go. He smiled widely and was very pleased.

The taxi dropped us off in Cacabelos and we then had about 9km to travel which was very pleasant as we went the option through Valtuille de Arriba which was away from the road and we had the chance to just wander through a multitude of cherry trees and vines with glossy green tendrils and small developing grapes.  This went for kilometres – such a great option!  We still can’t believe how many cherry trees just grow on the edge of the road and are not in anyone’s yard.  When we first saw them the cherries were very undeveloped and I didn’t think we would see any ready to pick but they were just another later fruiting variety as we saw both types today and even picked a few from a roadside tree.

Our accommodation was right on Plaza Mayor and the best was so gorgeous I didn’t want to go out!  A good soak in the bath and an hour or so of relaxation was enough and we needed to get out and get some food so we headed to the place across the square and ended up with a bowl of soup for me and a burger for Steve.  It was another time when any Spanish speaker was served before me even though I was clearly there first (had been acknowledged).  I suppose they don’t really care as it is unlikely that we will be back but we are certainly not the priority customer.

Off to our room and into such a comfortable bed – it is going to be hard to get out of bed in the morning but we are heading to Las Herreiras and it would be lovely to get there early enough to wash some clothes!