Let me assure you. Bullfighting is up close, intimate, and vividly realistic on a giant, flat screened TV. Here in Mombuey (KM 712) it provides the Sunday evening entertainment at the Bar San Martin just down the street from my Pilgrim’s refugio. The refugio’s denizens tonight include four bicyclists and me, all of us male. These proportions are quite representative of the August Via de la Plata. I am always outnumbered by the cyclists and female pilgrims on the summer silver road are a rarity. Happily this picture changes for me as my pilgrim friend AJ arrives to meet me by rail from Madrid. I walk 33 kilometers to Puebla de Sanabria during the day tomorrow to meet her middle-of-the-night inbound train.
My guidebook promises that the character of our walking landscape changes beginning tomorrow becoming “Galician”—rugged and mountainous. With pass elevations reaching 1329 meters (4,359 feet), some respite from the heat and even a little rain is a prospect. One of my companions tonight is a Stockholm born Swedish cyclist. He speaks English well and Spanish perfectly. He learned it in the home as both of his parents are from Spain.
The only shade I’ve enjoyed on many recent days has been under “Encina”, or Holm Oak, an unusual “evergreen” variety that does not shed its leaves. As conditions moderate, the Encina forest grows bigger.
