Day 13- Mombuey to Vilavella

What a day of contrasts! We set out from Mombuey in a chilly 13 degree morning. The chill remained for a good couple of hours! What amazing terrain to cover though! We were very happy to be in true single track, weaving our way through oak trees, over rock gardens and up technical loose climbs. We also got to pass through a couple of incredibly cute small villages. All rock and moss, with crumbling buildings and beautiful old churches.

 

Sunrise. Our favourite time of the day.

 

 

 

 

Mountain bikers heaven!

 

The morning for us have become power time! We bang out a good 30km straight up before we stop for second breakfast. Today we stopped in Puebla de Sanabria, an amazing town with a beautiful castle and some incredibly steep hills! Ben and I powered up one of the cobble stone climbs to the cheers of the locals. They couldn't believe we were even attempting it let alone making it to the top! Breakfast was a feast of grad proportions with coffee, toast with tomato and olive oil (our favourite) and tortilla. Yum! Energy food!

 

Even steeper than it looks!

 

Castle

Ben had warned me that after breakfast was climb time. He was right! The rest of the day was pretty much straight up, with us climbing up and over three mountains! Most of the way the camino had been re routed to take the bitumen due to road works (ie. motor ways being built). It seems it a bit of a Spanish obsession.... They are building motor ways everywhere! In some places there are three roads all running parallel to each other! As soon as they finish building one they build another. A response to the economic crisis? For us it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the road was tough! So I can't imagine how tough it would have been if we had taken the dirt.

Would you like hills with that?

 

We arrived in the town of Lubian at about 2:30pm. This was our planned stop for the day, but I was feeling pretty good and we have left ourselves with a massive final day into Santiago so decided to press on and try to do a few more km. we stopped first for lunch. A three course feast cause I was starving!

Lunch in stinky bike clothes. They don't even bat an eye.

After lunch we pressed on to Vilavella, another 15km of hills galore! We had to take the road as a local man had told me that there was no way we would get through with our bikes. On his advice we took an old back road which had no cars! Yay! It was pretty hot though and it was a big climb to the top of our final mountain for the day.

Keep on pushing!

 

 

Almost at the top

 

We arrived in Vilavella, another 85km done. We were expecting to stay in an albergue when I saw a sign for a hotel and spa. SPA!!!!! I wanted it so bad!!!! I went in and asked and we got a special pilgrim rate! So now here I am sitting in luxury after having spent a good hour and a half soaking my sore legs and thoroughly relaxing. Ahhhh. Feels even better than a rest day :-)

 

Happy bicigrino

 

Spaaaaaaaaa

 

With views of the mountains