A very full 25k day, 10 on horseback. Starting in the dark, walking through sunrise, we arrived to meet our guide who would take us to O Cebriero, a Gallecian town steeped in Celtic history.
Seven of us, three coincidentally from Vancouver's North Shore, rode up the steep mountain over pavement, Roman roads, shale and rocky dirt paths, the guide all the while holding onto a horse's tail. Can you imagine the shape that guy is in hiking up to O Cebriero twice per day?
Those ears belong to my sweet horse named Moracita, which translated to Little Blackberry. And here is our shadow:
It took us two hours by horse, and it appeared most people walked up in about 2.5 hours leading us to believe it was not as difficult as legend makes it out to be, but happy to have chosen the horse option for the ability to take in the magnificent scenery.
The mountainside was plucked right from the Sound of Music where you'd expect the dimpled and wimpled Maria Von Trapp, in her convent days, to emerge from the trees and burst into song.
The town O Cebriero was out of any storybook, all stone and thatch with Celtic music in the background. There was no bagpiper as we've read about. Must have been his day off. There was a different form of hobbit type house built into the side of the hills, pallozas, in which locals lived until the 1960's. An early form of split level, the families lived in the upper parts and the animals in the lower, providing the warmth of their body heat.
Taking a break we warmed up with a bowl of Caldo Gallego, the regional soup made of cabbage and potato, very satisfying on a cool mountain afternoon.
Reaching the end of my posting-by-email size limit, I'll continue this tomorrow.
Life's a Stitch 
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