Excerpt from

Camino de Invierno
The Winter Road
by
Aida Menéndez Lorenzo
Chairwoman of the Ribeira Sacra Roads to Santiago Association

Courtesy of https://en.venancioguntinas.com/caminoinvierno
(See this site for full details on Camino de Invierno)

For over a thousand years, since the remains of Saint James appeared in Compostela, waves of pilgrims have visited the place to pay tribute to his mortal remains and receive their plenary indulgences. Without a doubt, there was never just one single route, rather the devout pilgrims followed many roads all over the Iberian Peninsula and from the furthest reaches of Europe. One of the roads in that network to Santiago is "The Winter Road". It is a route that some pilgrims chose to avoid the harshest weather that affected the snow-covered peaks of the Cebreiro region or the flooding of the rivers in the Valcárcel valley, crossing the river could be quite dangerous, travelling across its feeble bridges. When the pilgrims reached Ponferrada, they could choose a much flatter road, through the Sil gorge, through the Valdeorras region of Ourense and the south of Lugo towards Santiago.

Although I had intended initially to travel by bus, in the end I opted to go by train, booking my ticket on Trainline.com.

I took the RENFE Intercity 280 departing Santiago de Compostela at 10:06 hrs, arriving in Ponferrada at 13:42hrs, for a cost of £23.35 plus a booking fee of £1.20

Ponferrada

Ponferrada (from the Latin Pons Ferrata, Iron Bridge) is the capital city of El Bierzo in the Province of León, Spain. It lies on Sil River and it is completely surrounded by mountains. It is the last major town on the French route of the Camino de Santiago before it reaches Santiago de Compostela.

In pre-Roman times the region was populated by the Astures, a Hispano-Celtic Gallaecian people. They were conquered by Emperor Augustus in the Astur-Cantabrian Wars (29-19 BC) and the area quickly became the largest mining center of the Empire during the Roman period, where gold and other metals and minerals were extracted. Numerous Roman mining sites are still visible in the area, one of the most spectacular being Las Médulas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997. The Romans also imported grapevines, and wine production thrived in the region until the propagation of Phylloxera at the end of the 19th century, which destroyed the majority of the vineyards.

The modern name of the city derives from the iron reinforcements added to the ancient bridge over the river Sil (Latin pons for "bridge" and ferrata for "iron"), commissioned in 1082 by Bishop Osmundo of Astorga to facilitate the crossing of the Sil River to pilgrims in their way to Santiago de Compostela.

The railroad arrived in Ponferrada in 1881, and during World War 1 andlocal tungsten deposits were exploited to supply the arms industry. In 1918 the Ponferrada Mining, Iron and Steel Company (Spanish: Minero Siderúrgica de Ponferrada (MSP)) was founded to exploit coal deposits in the region, and it grew to become Spain's largest coal mining corporation. The Spanish National Energy Corporation (Endesa) was founded in 1944 and in 1949 it opened Spain's first coal-fueled power plant in Ponferrada, Compostilla I. In 1960 the Bárcena Dam (Spanish: Pantano de Bárcena) opened and by the second half of the 20th century the economy of the city was mainly based on mining and electricity generation, both hydroelectric and coal-fueled.

Starting in the late 1980s most mines were closed, and after the collapse of the mining industry Ponferrada was for a while in a crisis. However, in the late 1990s the city underwent a major transformation with the establishment in the city of several industrial and services firms, the reintroduction of commercial wine production, the opening of a local branch of the University of León offering several undergraduate degrees, and in general a radical improvement of the town's infrastructure. The economy is now based mainly on tourism, agriculture (fruit and wine), wind power generation and slate mining.

Total

215.83

4,186

Hotel San Clemente,
San Clemente, 28,
Santiago de Compostela,
A Coruña
Tel: +34 981 56 93 50
Via www.booking.com
Euro 50 per night excl breakfast

Hostal Mayo,
Avenida Eulogio Fernández, 70,
32300 O Barco de Valdeorras
Tel: +34 988 32 20 98
Via www,booking.com
Euro 30

Pacio do Sil,
Calle de Xestal, 33,
Rua de Valdeorras,
32350 La Rúa,
Ourense
Tel: +34 988 31 13 46
Via www.booking.com
Euro 60

MON ComeySueñya Guesthouse,
Roberto Baamonde, 30,
27400 Monforte de Lemos
Tel: +34 677 47 47 36
2 nights via www.booking.com
Euro 72 inc breakfast

Hotel Mogay,
Jose Antonio Lorenzana, 3,
27500 Chantada
Tel: +34 982 44 08 47
Via www.booking.com
Euro 55

Pazo de Galegos,
Galegos, 6,
15885 San Pedro de Vilanova
Tel:+34 981 51 22 17
Booked direct over internet
hotel@pazodegalegos.com
Euro 60 inc breakfast

Hotel Lorenzo,
San Lorenzo 2,
15705 Santiago de Compostela
Tel: +34 981 58 01 33
Euro 62 booked directly by email (Note: due to extensive refurbishment work going on at the hotel I shortened my stay from 3 nights to 1 night.)

PR*** RosaRosae,
Calle La Rosa 7,
15702 Santiago de Compostela
Tel: (+34) 981 528 300
www.rosarosae.es

The trip to Santiago de Compostela is almost becoming routine as I have done it so many times. Drop off at Stansted airport, check in for Ryanair flight, arrive at Santiago and get the Euro 3 bus ride into town which takes less than 30 minutes. I usually pay on the bus, but this time I noticed new automatic ticket sales machines. I thought that I would try it, but it took quite a while and seemed overcomplicated compared with paying on the bus. I got to the end of the sequence and realised that you could not pay cash; you had to pay by credit card. I inserted my Mastercard but could not work out how to put the pin number in. By this time the bus had arrived and the last passenger was about to get on. Panic! I could not abort the automated ticket purchase and I could not work out how to get my Mastercard back! I noticed that a little bit of the card was showing and managed to pull it out! Phew! I got on the bus just in time and paid my 3 euro. Never again will I bother with the automated ticket vendor when it is so easy to pay cash on the bus!

I was soon in Plaza de Galicia in downtown Santiago and made the short walk to Hotel San Clemente. It started raining quite heavily and was quite cold, so I was looking forward to checking in. Unfortunately the receptionist had popped out to visit their sister hotel, so I had to wait on the doorstep. I phoned their help line a couple of times, and eventually she came. It was nice to be back in Hotel San Clemente..... My home from home.

I went over to the Cathedral to see what was happening. The outside renovation is complete and looks great, but they have now started on the inside. All the pews and confession boxes have been removed and replaced by scaffold whilst they do the work. You can still walk around, but of course there is absolutely no atmosphere. The 12-noon pilgrims mass is now held in the nearby Church of San Francisco. Leaving the cathedral I walked along the narrow streets to Peticos Cardinal, my favourite tapas bar, and after a light meal headed back to the hotel.