Today we left Oncina de la Valdoncina / Villar de Mazarife and headed to Astorga.
This was the last time on this trip that we would walk and then get a transfer to hotel / back to where we left off. It was very sunny (hence the squint in the first photo) but also very cold.
Villar de Mazarife owes its origins to Mazaref, the head of an illustrious family of Mozarabs from Córdoba who, under the protection of privileges from the kings of León, undertook the great enterprise of repopulating the upper Páramo. The road from Villar was very straight as far as Villavante – not much of note was happening other than farming activities in the fields and a couple of tractors on our path.
We walked through the village of Villavante and out onto another lengthy, straight road. In fact these two straight roads comprised the first 1/3rd of today’s walk. After being passed by a geriatric tractor we then walked along beside the railway line for a while before approaching the town of Hospital de Órbigo.
We crossed the Puente del Paso Honoro, which is a medieval bridge from the 13th century, built over the Órbigo river. It is now too big for the current river, but before the construction of the Barrios de Luna reservoir the river’s flow was much greater. The bridge has 19 arches and has been a national monument since 1939. The name of the bridge comes from a famous jousting tournament that took place in the Jacobean Holy Year of 1434.
The path had been flat up to this stage, now we faced a climb (not too arduous) for the next few kilometers. The scenery was a mixture of crops and scrub, one pretty field of poppies and purple flowers stood out. Soon enough we were at the top of the hill, marked by a cross, and could see Astorga and its cathedral in the distance. It was a reasonably short walk from there, down the hill and into Astorga, where we checked into our hotel and then set out to check out the sights (and maybe have an ice cream).
The Episcopal Palace of Astorga is a building by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. Built between 1889 and 1913 and designed in the Catalan Modernisme style, it is one of only three buildings by Gaudí outside Catalonia. When the original Episcopal Palace was destroyed by a fire in the 19th century, Bishop Juan Bautista Grau y Vallespinos, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Astorga, desired to assign the design of the new building to his friend Gaudi.
Next up was the Cathedral. The gothic edifice was begun in 1471, within the same walls of its Romanesque predecessors from the 11th-13th centuries. The construction lasted until the 18th century, so its original Gothic Style appearance was added to with elements from later styles, such as the Neo-Classicist cloister (18th century), the Baroque towers, capitals and the façade, and the Renaissance portico. With a rectangular layout, it has an architectural closeness to the German Gothic style. Above is a photo dump of the beautiful interior, altars and chapels.
Of course we had an ice cream!
Tomorrow we start climbing back into the mountains and head to Rabanal del Camino