To Cacabelos, nearing the next mountain pass (We 2 Oct)

Rain held off almost the whole day -- stars in the early morning and hot sunshine mid afternoon, but as I write this from the comforts of our little room at the Cacabelos municipal albergue, it's raining hard and we just had a flash of lightning and clap of thunder.    It's a unique albergue: a stone and metal roofed structure built to surround three sides of the old church, with 35 small rooms facing inwards, each with two beds and a light.

Church on the right, and rooms open up towards it:

Covered seating areas for eating and socializing.  After settling in, Larry headed out looking for a supermarket and came back with fixins for and dinner a few hours later.  No kitchen, so it had to be all picnic style.  Yummy, fresh veggies, fruit, chorizo and cheese.

Jan unpacking.  Interesting mix of stone walls and wooden ceiling.  Quite comfortable:

And how we arrived here today... An early start, so we passed through this small town in the dusk.  Another beautiful red sky blossomed a few minutes later, as it has probably 9 out of 10 mornings this whole trip:

Then into the city of Ponferrada, with this amazing Templar castle right in the centre of town:

We enjoyed a great cup of coffee and pastry at a panaderia with a view of the castle.  Outside, we were happy to see Martin, a semi-professional tuba player from Switzerland.  We had dinner with him last night:

Souvenir shop across from the castle. Shining armour, chain mail headwear mighty tempting, but a tad too heavy to lug to Santiago:

Next a couple of shots of people who were happily working.  Our guidebook mentioned the views from behind an old church, so we went around and there was this woman hoeing the garden around the trees,  She agreed to pose for this shot:

 And this jolly fellow was charring peppers in his backyard.  Ahhh, the sweet aroma of roasting peppers:

We hadn't seen vineyards for a week or so, and we were wondering if we'd ever see the harvest.  This area has a microclimate ideal for grapes and we were treated to ripe grapes:

And the harvest (all by hand) in full swing:

Tractor loads of grapes turning down the Main Street in Cacabelos.  Our albergue just at the bend in the road:

Earlier, we'd stopped for a bathroom break at a place offering tourist information, wine tasting. Turned out to be a full-fledged winery and the toilets?  Right through the winery:

One last thing.  It's common for trucks to pull up in remote villages, or towns like this, and honk their horns and out will come the local folk to buy bread (like in this picture) or meat, vegetables, frozen fish, etc:

One last shot of our albergue, the stone wall and metal-roofed structure that surrounds this church: