Edibles

Susan picked up an edible Ojai and Ventura County at the Ventura Farmers' Market and, golly, it's been a while since I perused their publications, and now they have Ventura county as part of the first edible publication from Ojai, with "Fillmore" on the front in tiny letters.  I see that Edible Allegheny is still around (I should subscribe so they don't fold like edible D.C. did -- although now I see that it is up and running again).  They are nice magazines to peruse now and then so you can see what food you should look for when you visit a place, and the photos can be lovely.

For instance, edible Queens has lovely photos of a featured Neighborhood Deli: Morscher’s Pork Store in Ridgewood.  Why, it looks even more interesting than that cheese store in Trastevere and I bet it smells absolutely fantastic!  Look at those sausages!  and they have more than one variety of headcheese.

Sometimes it is hard to know what town the magazine covers unless you are from the region, like edible East End (but then they have a lot of articles on latkes so you can figure it out), or Pioneer Valley (is that like Fillmore's Heritage Valley?), or Front Range, or Nutmeg, or South Shore, or even Door and Allegheny because who is familiar with counties?  And then there is edible WOW...  Detroit and Ann Arbor?  but what does W.O.W. stand for?  Wide Open West???

Are they yuppie publications?  You bet.  Just like Slow Food.  But every so often you run across something interesting that you didn't know before.

Walking from Malibu to Mexico

Mother sent me back to the house with 3 new Sunset magazines, one of which featured a trek from Newport Beach to San Clemente with the author of a walkabout guide: Walkabout Malibu to Mexico: Hiking Inn to Inn on the Southern California Coast.  The author, Tom Courtney, is my age, a retired UC Berkeley professor, and has written a previous book on walking Northern California.  He's gotten a lot of local press and even a recent blurb in a New York Times blog but I haven't heard about Walkabout California that I can remember.

Naturally, the inns are not the 10 euro albergues that you find on the Camino but most of the ones Sunset lists are below $200 and I wonder if you couldn't find cheaper dives by the beach.  A query about cheaper accommodations on the walkabout forum got this reply: "There are hostels and Motel 6 along the way....and there's always airbnb."

Obviously there will be a lot of stairs as you walk up and down the cliffs by the beach so it might be a little hard on the knees.  You can buy digital sections of the guide online or download a complete digital version (pdf or kindle editions).  Maybe Juan and Mandy would like to try the 5-day La Jolla to Mexico stretch sometime, although I know that they would much prefer a cruise or lolling on the beach.

I hope that soon Courtney will come out with a Walkabout Central California since he only reaches Monterey in the Northern California volume and starts at Malibu in the Southern California volume.

Our Walking Record on the Camino

I want to be realistic about how far we can walk each day.  In 2007, when we were 8 years younger, this was our mileage (granted Fernando had major foot problems):
Roncesvalles to Zubiri (rocky, muddy and in the rain): 22.2 km or 13 1/3 miles.
Pamplona to Uterga: 16.8 km (10 miles). (up over a mountain)
Uterga to Puente la Reina: 10.1 km (6 miles). (very easy)
Estella to Los Arcos: 22.7 km (13.6 miles) - without pack this was most enjoyable
Los Arcos to Viana: 19 km (11.4 miles)

If we can keep it at 20 km without packs, we should do OK, as long as we start out early or have reservations at each refugio/hostal so we don't arrive at our destination with no place to stay, like we did at the beginning of our Camino in 2007.  We won't start out on May 1st and we will have reservations for that day, which means we need to carry a cell phone.  One that works.  The following is assuming a 3 mph walk.  Let's also assume a 2.5 mph walk, but no less than that!

1.  Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo: 23.7 km (14.22 miles) (4.74 hours) (5.69 hours)
2.  Villafranca to Vega del Valcarce: 19.7 km (11.82 miles) (3.94 hours) (4.73 hours)
3.  Vega del Valcarce to O Cebreiro: 11.2 km (6.72 miles) (2.24 hours) (2.69 hours)
4.  O Cebreiro to Triacastela: 20.7 km (12.42 miles) (4.14 hours) (4.97 hours)
5.  Triacastela to Sarria: 25 km (15 miles) (5 hours) (6 hours)
6.  Sarria to PortoMarin: 22.9 km (13.74 miles) (4.58 hours) (5.5 hours)
7.  Portomarin to Palas de Rei: 26.1 km (15.66 miles) (5.22 hours) (6.26 hours)
8.  Palas de Rei to Melide: 15.3 km (9.18 miles) (3.06 hours) (3.67 hours)
9.  Melide to Arzua: 14.1 km (8.46 miles) (2.82 hours) (3.38)
10. Arzua to Pedrouzo (Arca do Pino): 19.2 km (11.2 miles) (3.84 hours) (4.48 hours)
11. Pedrouzo (Arca do Pino) to Santiago: 20.6 km (12.36 miles (4.12 hours) (4.94 hours)

So that is 11 days of easy walking, more or less.  In 2007 we used the luggage transfer service Jacotrans from Estella to Los Arcos.  The Leon office has a list of albergues/hostales from which they pick up luggage.  I'll have to check them out, although the idea of making reservations in advance makes me uneasy.  What if we don't make it to our destination???

Planning for the Last Stages of the Camino

How to break up the walk into manageable portions.  This isn't very interesting reading but is my scratch pad.

I'm looking at the first (and still most appealing) book I bought about the Camino when we went to Barcelona in 1999: El Camino de Santiago a Pie.  The stages they recommend for starting in Ponferrada (our first stage), with the mileage and hours, follow, with the original numbering from Roncesvalles.  They may have chosen the various villages to stop in because they have refugios/albergues  and because they wanted to complete the entire Camino from the French Border in a month.  There are more accommodations available now and we are also in no hurry to get to Santiago so we can split up the days or choose to stay in other locations.  We just have to make sure that there are accommodations available.

22. Ponferrada (205.4 km to Santiago) to Villafranca del Bierzo: 22.5 km; 5 1/2 hours.  Evidently an easy day as it is marked with one boot.  (183 km left)
23. Villafranca del Bierzo to O Cebreiro: 30 km; 8 1/2 hours; 3 boots. (153 km left)
24.  O Cebreiro to Triacastela: 20.5 km; 5 hours; 1 boot. (132.4 km left)
25.  Triacastela to Barbadelo: 22.9 km; 5 1/2 hours; 1 boot. (109.5 km left)
26.  Barbadelo to Gonzar: 25.3 km; 7 hours; 2 boots. (84.2 km left)
27.  Gonzar to Melide: 31.7 km; 8 hours; 3 boots.  (52.5 km left)
28.  Melide to Pedrouzo/Arca: 32.4 km; 8 hours; 2 boots.  (20.1 km left)
29.  Pedrouzo/Arca to Santiago: 20.1 km; 5 hours; 1 boot.

John Brierly in A Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino de Santiago (2006) breaks it up differently, staying in a town before Ponferrada, Molinaseca, which would increase our first day's kilometrage to 30.7 km (19.1 miles), not something I would do.  Brierly also says there is much to see in Ponferrada (including the Templar castle), a town of 60,000 which gets its name from the iron bridge that was built here in the 11th century.  Its tourist office has lists of hostals and guest houses in addition to the new albergue that has 185 beds.  So, changing his starting point to Ponferrada, the stages would be:

1.  Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo: 23.7 km.  Villafranca only has a population of 5,000 but it is a popular tourist venue so it has a "wide range of alternative accommodations".
2.  Villafranca del Bierzo to O Cebreiro: 30.9 km (19.2 miles).  This stage is the steepest of the whole Camino but offers stunning views of the Valcarce Valley (Vallis Carceras in Latin means narrow valley).  There are intermediate accommodations so we could break the walk in two.  O Cebreiro has also become a popular tourist venue.
3.  O Cebreiro to Triacastela: 20.7 km (12.9 miles) downhill (after a short steep climb) with tremendous views.
4.  Triacastela to Sarria via Samos: 25 km (15.5 miles).  Sarria is a bustling modern town of 12,000 with railway and bus lines.
5. Sarria to PortoMarin: 22.9 km (14.2 miles).  Portomarin is a modern town of 2,000 on the edge of a reservoir created in 1962, which flooded the original town so that the residents opted to have it relocated here.
6.  Portomarin to Palas de Rei: 26.1 km (16.2 miles).  The regular Lugo to Santiago bus stops here in case we need to quit :-).
7.  Palas de Rei to Ribadiso (Arzua): 26.4 km (16.4 miles).  Midway through this walk (15.3 km) is the town of Melide with a town of 8,000 that is known for its octopus (even though it is not on the coast!), so that would be a good additional stopping night for us.
8.  Ribadiso to Arca do Pino (Pedrouzo): 22.2 km (13.8 miles).  There are duplicate names for many of these towns, one in Spanish and the other in Galician (Gallego).  Brierly says this is the last main albergue before Santiago.
9.  Arca (Pedrouzo) to Santiago: 20.6 km (12.8 miles).

Fernando will be in no hurry and he wants to break the stages down further and start closer to Santiago and stay a few nights in Leon...  He also doesn't like the looks of O Cebreiro, but then I showed him this video and now he says "very interesting"...  Stay tuned.

Oh!  and if you want to see short video clips of the whole route from O Cebreiro to Santiago, check out https://www.youtube.com/user/XacobeoVideo.

O Cebreiro to Santiago?

O Cebreiro from the Trepidatious Traveller

I'm not completely convinced about starting our walk in this little stone village at the Galician/Leon y Castilla border, which I assume is popular because it is the first town in Galicia and more or less at the top of a mountain.  I've been reading blog posts and looking at videos about this last section of the Camino just to get an idea of what we will be up against.  My blog is my thinking pad.

The Trepidatious Traveller (60 year-old English woman living in Spain) did the whole Camino Frances from St. Jean Pied de Port with her daughter in 2013.  She was worried that as soon as she reached Sarria (a bit closer to Santiago than O Cebreiro), the way would get crowded with "day trippers" (like us) just doing the minimum required for the Compostela (certificate).  She did not find that to be the case and she did long days (25-30 km/15-18 miles), stopping later in the afternoon and was always able to find a place to stay.  She did go in May when it is less crowded and she did stay in towns that aren't the standard stopping places.

Even more reassuring are some Youtube videos from a Spanish family (father, mother and teenage daughter) that filmed parts of 9 daily stages from Ponferrada to Santiago.  They went in August, the Spanish vacation month, so it should have been the most crowded, yet in the videos the Camino doesn't look crowded at all.  In fact, the Camino looked more crowded when we were doing the Camino in 2007 from Roncesvalles to Logrono.

Shall we book the flight?  US Airways from Pittsburgh to Madrid is $1083.80/person, leaving May 5th and returning May 19th.   Or we could use our American Advantage miles, except each way, leaving April 29th and returning May 12th is 20K and we only have 70K right now.  We better hurry up and spend more money on the AA credit card!  Usually we have no problem with that...  Stay tuned!!

The Camino Portugués

I was reading The Trepidatious Traveler's blog on the Camino Portugués which runs from Lisbon to Santiago de Compostela.  That route is appealing for its comparative obscurity (not as crowded), its proximity to the coast which I hope makes it less mountainous, and thus hopefully warmer.  However, since fewer people travel it, there are fewer accommodations and I'm not sure if there is a luggage transport system and that is something we would definitely want this time.  It was much more delightful walking without a 27 pound pack.

The Camino Portugués (Caminho Portugués) is 615 kilometers so it is shorter than the Camino Francés which is 800 Km from St. Jean Pied de Port.  The Trepidatious Traveler did it in 27 days while Camino Ways has a self-guided tour for 28 days.  Camino Ways divides it into 5 sections and the last section, from Tui at the Portuguese border to Santiago, is 110 kilometers.  There are some ups and downs in the last section but the highest elevation is only 255 meters at the end when you reach Santiago.  In all the Camino Portugués, the highest elevation is 472 meters.  The last 100 km of the Camino Frances has a high point of 723 meters, and if we started from O Cebreiro, at the border between Galicia and Leon, the altitude is 1300 meters but from there it is downhill followed by ups and downs of lower elevations.  Of course with mountains come views so that might make for more spectacular scenery.

Maybe we can do O Cebreiro to Santiago this year and the Camino Portugués next year.

Are we ready for the Camino again?

Stages and mileage on the Camino

It's been 7 1/2 years since we did the first stage of the Camino de Santiago in May of 2007, from Roncesvalles to Burgos, although we went by bus the last stretch from Logroño to Burgos because of Fernando's feet.  This time he will take his boots and I will make him practice beforehand.

This time Fernando also wants to end up in Santiago de Compostela so that means we need to start closer to the end, perhaps in O Cebreiro which is 159 kilometres/98 miles from Santiago.  This means going through the hills of Galicia where it often rains and means mud so we'll need to be ready for that.   Mundiplus has an itinerary from O Cebreiro to Santiago that takes 10 days.  And CaminoWays shows the elevation of the route under their "itinerary" tab from Ponferrada to Sarri (O Cebreiro is midway between them) and then from Sarri to Santiago.   It is quite hilly.  Sarri to Santiago takes 6 or 7 nights and covers the minimum 100 km required for the Compostela certificate.  The advantage to self-guided tour companies like Mundiplus and Caminoways is that they carry your luggage from hotel to hotel and include the accommodations as well as breakfast and dinner.  One happy customer said "Unlike other pilgrims, we didn’t have to carry our luggage and we didn’t have to hurry to the next town to find a place to sleep."

The disadvantage is that it comes at a price: Mundiplus charges 790 euros ($977) per person sharing a double room for its 10 day self-guided tour from O Cebreiro to Santiago.  That would be $1,580/10 or $158/day.  The Outer Banks is about $126/day for us and that doesn't include two meals and luggage transfers, so I suppose Mundiplus isn't outrageous, except that we still have to get to Spain.  And of course, we might feel a bit extravagant walking among other pilgrims who are roughing it in refugios for 10 euros a night...