Trains to and from the Camino

I wrote this post at the beginning of March.  I'm still waiting to make reservations for the last leg of the trip from Santiago de Compostela to Madrid.  Renfe still doesn't have the schedules for that route and date.

Our flight to Madrid gets in at 8:20 am on Friday, May 1st.  But with our experience with flying US Airways to Rome in November, when both flights were 3 hours late, I want to allow plenty of time to catch the train.  The high speed trains to Leon are at 11:05 and 14:40.  When we flew to Madrid in 2007 with a 7:35 arrival time, we had made reservations for the 14:05 train to Pamplona and were able to change them to the 9:50 train.  That time we went first class and there was hardly anyone else in the car so I'm hoping that maybe we can do the same thing this year although it is May 1st so the train could be crowded.  At least if we go first class where there are fewer passengers, it should be easier to get an earlier train.  So we are on the first class car (117 euros for two) of the ALVIA 04141 train that leaves from Madrid's Charmartin station at 2:40pm and arrives in Leon at 5:40.
Here are the stations along the way:
Segovia (3:11pm); Valladolid (3:50pm); Palencia (4:30pm); Sahagun (5:04)

I'll have to wait until March 13th to make the reservation from Santiago de Compostela to Madrid since they don't take reservations more than 2 months in advance.  They have a 9:05 train that arrives at 14.56 (2:56 pm).

Here's a map of the train routes.

León Gastronomy

León did not get its name from león the lion but from the Roman Seventh Legion that set up its fortress here to protect the gold mines in Astorga in the first century AD.  Sometime we will have to go visit the nearby Las Médulas where the Romans used hydraulic mining to wash away the soil from the mountains and retrieve the gold.

Las Medulas

Despite the real derivation of its name, León still uses the lion in its coat of arms.

León is situated on a high plain, to the east of Burgos.  After León, the mountains begin again so this is not the part of the Camino that we chose to walk, although I wish we could have visited the towns of Astorga (a Roman town founded in 14 BC as Asturica Augusta), Ponferrada (from the Latin Pons Ferrata or Iron Bridge), and Villafranca del Bierzo.

Chorizo de León

León is known gastronomically for its cured meats so Fernando can't be a vegetarian here.  He won't want to be when morcilla, lengua and manitas de cerdo appear on the menu.  The Chorizo de León is spicy with red paprika and smoked over oak wood.  We'll have to remember to take some with us for lunches when we are walking.

Then there is Botillo del Bierzo, which I've already mentioned, as being the caecum of a pig stuffed with miscellaneous parts, including bones, so that is something that is not picnic food but that one has to sit down to and that is served hot.  Plus it wouldn't fit in my little 16 liter  Gregory Maya backpack.

Lengua Curada

Then there is Lengua Curada or cured tongue which can be served "loncheada" with aceite.  I'm assuming this means sliced thinly (as for "lunches") and dressed with olive oil because the tongue is not very fatty and dries out.  There is also stewed lengua on the menus or we could get a "surtida" with an assortment of cured meats, because of course we have to order some morcilla (blood sausage) for Fernando.  The restaurant La Poveda has an extensive list of animal parts in its "raciones" or tapas menu, some of which I will have to Google to discover what they actually are before we get there.  Like mollejas de lechazo, which are sweetbreads of a young lamb, chipirones (squid), ajetes (young garlic), oricios (sea urchin), necoras (small crabs), and one we'll definitely have to try: percebes or goose barnacles.

Pimientos del Bierzo

I, of course, might opt out of most of the meats so that I can concentrate on the pimientos del Bierzo -- Valle del Bierzo being west of León --  and the pimiento morrón de Fresno de la Vega, Fresno de la Vega being just south of León.  I'm afraid I'll have to settle for canned ones since May isn't exactly the season for peppers.  Maybe we should have planned the Camino for September when there are more harvest festivals.  If we stay in private hostales and pensiones and hotels we shouldn't have to worry about the end-of-the-season bedbugs.  Maybe next time!

Cocido Maragato

What other vegetable options are there in León?  In Pamplona they had a number of tapas with berenjena that were very good so I am hoping there might be a couple of eggplant tapas in León.  Alubias and other beans are popular in the region -- essentially anything that can be cooked into a hearty stew with meat.  One such stew is Cocido Maragato from Astorga which features berza (that broccoli raab type of green), garbanzos and seven to twelve meats (what did you expect?).  The meat is served first, then the garbanzos, and last the soup.  All cocidos seem to be composed of garbanzos and meat.  Then there is the Olla Berciana which appears to be the same thing from the photos, only it is what they eat in Bierza.

And I suppose there is always the Menestra de Verduras, that overcooked vegetable stew.  Did you know that you can buy the vegetables frozen in a bag so all you have to do is add water and meat?  If we had an apartment we could make our own undercooked version without the meat.

I am always on the lookout for a version that is fresh and green but I was a bit surprised to find out that in 1994 the famous Catalan chef, Ferran Adrià of elBulli, deconstructed the menestra into what you see on the left.  What do you think?  I'm afraid he has had no influence whatsoever on the Spanish cooking of the menestra.

Getting to Sarria

We arrive in Madrid on May 1st (why do we always choose International Labor Day to begin our travels?).  In 2007 we took a very pleasant train ride from Madrid to Pamplona.  We hope to do the same to Leon this time and then we'll take a bus to Sarria, which is proving to be more complicated (sort of like the one bus a day - at 5 pm - from Pamplona to Roncesvalles). 

Renfe offers Alvia and Intercity trains from Madrid's Charmartin station to Leon that take about 3 hours.  The Alvia costs 45.30€ and the Intercity 37€.  We are scheduled to arrive in Madrid at 8:20 am but it is on US Airways so that could mean 11:20 am.  We'll have to get from the Barajas airport to the Charmartin train station so that might be another hour.  There are trains at: 10:30, 11:05, 14:40, 17:05, 19:00, 20:30.  Needless to say, we should have a hotel reservation in Leon since it is a holiday.  And we better make train reservations as well, perhaps on RailEurope.com.

Then to get to Sarria, it appears we will have to take a bus from Leon to Lugo on ALSA, and then take a different bus company, MonBus, from Lugo to Sarria.  There are two nonstop buses from Leon to Lugo that appear to run every day:  10:15 am (arriving at 13:30) and 16:30 pm (arriving at 20:15pm).  Obviously we would take the morning bus.  The fare is 17.54€ apiece.

The trip from Lugo to Sarria is much shorter, only 35 minutes, and there are 13 buses a day on weekdays.  There are buses at 13:45, 14:45, 15:20, 17:30, 18:35 (I might as well get used to that 24 hour clock).  So if everything ran on schedule, we could take the 10:15 bus from Leon to Lugo and then the 13:45 bus to Sarria, and if we missed that there's the 14:45 bus.  However, if we went on Sunday, there are fewer buses: if we missed the 13:45 bus, we'd have to wait until 18:35 for the next one.  The fare is 3.70€ apiece.  Monbus doesn't seem to service Leon, although it goes to Madrid, Barcelona, Burgos and many other cities.

How much did we plan ahead in 2007?  I know we bought our train tickets online and then were able to change them to an earlier train at the station.  But that wasn't May 1st.