Pilgrim's Road

places...
     
    In spite of the mist, which was as wet as rain, I thought I had better not wear the hood of my rain jacket so that I would have more chance of hearing the approach of any vehicle. The road was very narrow and twisting, with blind corners and steep descents, hazardous at any time, but with such minimal visibility it was extremely dangerous. And indeed I did meet a car on one corner, but fortunately the driver was feeling his way with due caution and I had time to pull off the road; there certainly was not room for us both.
    After a few miles of straining to hear above the sound of the tyres and the rustle of the waterproofs — sounds a rider is usually unaware of, but magnified now by the mist — I came over the true summit of the pass and began to lose height. Abruptly I was out of the cloud, as though passing through a curtain to find a new smiling countryside spread out below and the small village of El Acebo at my feet. I had ridden through the middle of two tiny ghost villages in the mist, but El Acebo was still very much alive and in good repair, its roofs newly slated and its small balconies and outside staircases far more solid than they appear in old photographs. The road had also been renewed and I had cause to be thankful that I came to it in clear visibility for it constituted the most potentially lethal hundred yards of the entire descent. The steep slope had been given a concrete finish, roughened to prevent animals slipping, but with a chevron of deeply cut drains running right across it from the houses to a wide gully down the centre of the road. A narrow wheel could find a hundred places to jam or spin off course: it could almost have been designed as the perfect bicycle trap, and for good measure the entire surface was slippery with fresh cow pats. Not much will induce me to walk downhill, but El Acebo did, and even so I had the greatest difficulty getting through without my feet skidding from under me. Just beyond the village was a metalwork sculpture of an upended bicycle, the memorial to one ‘Heinrich Krause, Peregrino’, a cycling pilgrim who met his death here.
    By this time, with all the hard work of the ascent and no proper breakfast I was famished. So, in the manner of the Etruscans and Ancient Egyptians who honoured their dead by having picnics at their tombs, I paid my respects to the memory of a fellow cyclist by brewing up a cup of coffee there and eating what few bits and pieces of stale bread, nuts and dried apricots I had left in my panniers. It was a salutary reminder, if one was needed, of what I had thought at the Foncebadón cross — that modern pilgrims met their share of danger too. Had my guardian angel been less vigilant it could easily have been me awaiting burial in the small cemetery at my back. Had that been the case, however, with these tremendous views and the eternal prospect of the long downhill glide to the valley floor, it would be hard to find a more fitting resting place for a bicyclist.
    The long thrilling descent into the Bierzo went on and on, the day becoming warmer and the countryside growing ever more fertile as I lost height. Around the charming village of Molinaseca the fields were white with the blossom of thousands of cherry trees brought there originally from the Black Sea coast of Turkey by the Romans who colonised this valley. I paused just long enough to see the famous bridge which had replaced the one which the turbulent Queen Urraca of Castile had demolished. The river had been dammed just below it and a splendid swimming place created. In warmer weather I would have stopped and swum there.
    A short while later I was riding into the large sprawling town of Ponferrada which lies at the confluence of the Rivers Sil and Boeza. Once I had managed to wriggle a way through the bewildering industrial outskirts of this city (designed purely, it seemed, to confuse travellers) I was in a small and pretty old town relaxing in its late Sunday morning inactivity.
    The oldest monuments in Ponferrada are two medieval bridges spanning the deep river gorges. One of these was built in iron, so unusual a choice of material for the twelfth century that it gave the town its name. The most striking relic of the place, however, is the splendid thirteenth-century castle which was the Spanish headquarters of the Knights Templar. The castle is largely ruined but still conveys a quality of adventure and high romance, particularly the sharply cut