After a great rest day in León, and 15km of “strolling”, today we headed out to Villar de Mazarife.
León was founded in the 1st century by the Roman legion Legio VI Victrix which served under Caesar August during the Cantabrian Wars (29-19BC), the final stage of the Roman conquest of Hispania. In the year 74AD the Legio VII Gemina settled in a permanent military camp that was the origin of the city. Its modern name is derived from the city’s Latin name Castra Legionis. The Romans established the site of the city to protect the recently conquered territories of northwestern Hispania from the local Celtic tribes and to secure the transport of the gold extracted in the province — especially in the huge nearby mines of Las Médulas— that was taken to Rome through Asturica Augusta (modern-day Astorga – tomorrows destination).
We walked nearly 1/3rd of our distance today to get out of León and its suburbs, crossing the River Bernesga via the Puente Roman de San Marcos. The walk was through the various suburbs, including interesting shaped apartment block sandwiched between the railway and busy road.
Before leaving the city limits, we came to the Santuario de la Virgen del Camino – built between 1957 and 1961 by the architect Fray Coello from Portugal replacing the previous church that had become too small to accommodate all the parishioners and pilgrims. Its construction was financed in part thanks to the Leonese patron Pablo Diez, owner of Groupo Modelo, a multinational beer company from Mexico. It is governed by the Dominican Order, who promoted a modern-style church, both in its architecture and in its sculptural decoration.
We passed a few more “hobbit” houses and then the rest of the walk to our end destination for the day was across a very flat plain, even if it was at about 900m elevation. Lots of scrubland as well as crop fields. Apparently the good weather we are having has come about a month early and the lack of rain is already affecting the crop growth.
A relatively short day today, only 21km, meant that we walked into Villar de Mazarife and waited for our transfer back to our hotel. The hotel was 12km back the way we had come (we walked part it earlier) and we will get a transfer back to Villar de Mazarife tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow we head to Astorga.