The best day on the Camino Frances: Villafranca del Bierzo up to O Cebreiro

Villafranca del Bierzo, Trabadelo, Vega de Valcarce, Herrerias, O Cebreiro

1. 6:30 am1

   Stamp the credencial and hand the pack to JacotransVillafranca del Bierzo

   If you use the backpack transfer once on the whole Camino, use it today. Envelope with the cash left on the bag at the albergue before eight, and it is waiting at O Cebreiro. Seven hundred metres of climb at the end of twenty-eight kilometres is a completely different day with ten kilos on your back. Get the sello here too - the next one is twelve kilometres on.

   11 min by train or taxi · 6.9 km
2. 7 am2

   The valley route along the Valcarce, not the Pradela hillTrabadelo

   Two waymarked options leave Villafranca. The Pradela variant climbs 300 m for a view; the valley route hugs the river under the A-6 flyovers and is shorter and flatter. Take the valley - you need the legs for O Cebreiro, and the concrete viaducts arching over a chestnut river are far stranger and better than the guidebook photos suggest. Second breakfast at Casa Susi in Trabadelo if it is open.

   11 min by train or taxi · 6.8 km
3. 9:30 am3

   Trabadelo to Herrerias past the Castillo de SarracinVega de Valcarce

   Chestnut woods, a ruined ninth-century castle on the hill above Vega, and the last flat ground you will see today. Fill water at the Vega fountain in the square.

   8 min by train or taxi · 3.7 km
4. 12:30 pm4

   Eat properly at Herrerias before the climbHerrerias

   This is the decision point of the day. La Faba is three and a half kilometres and 400 m straight up a stone-walled holloway with nothing in between, and after that it is another 300 m to the top. A full plate and twenty minutes off your feet here is worth an hour later.

5. 1:30 pm5

   The climb: Herrerias, La Faba, Laguna de Castilla, O CebreiroO Cebreiro

   Seven hundred metres of climb in eight kilometres, most of it on a sunken cattle track that is mud after rain. You cross into Galicia just past Laguna de Castilla and the first granite kilometre marker appears. In October the mist comes up the valley behind you as you climb, which is the view everybody remembers from the whole Camino.

6. 4:30 pm6

   Bed at the Xunta albergueO Cebreiro

   Xunta albergues are first-come and cannot be reserved. Arrive by five in season or you are walking another five kilometres to Hospital da Condesa. Bring a sleeping bag: they issue a mattress and a disposable sheet, nothing warmer, and it is 1,300 m up.

7. 5:15 pm7

   The pallozas and Santa Maria la RealO Cebreiro

   Ninth century and the oldest church still standing on the entire Camino Frances, with the pre-Roman thatched pallozas beside it. This is the reason to stop here rather than push on to Fonfria, and it takes twenty minutes.

8. 8 pm8

   Caldo gallego at Meson AntonO Cebreiro

   It is cold up here in every month of the year and the caldo is the entire point. Order the queso do Cebreiro as well - cone-shaped, made in this village, and effectively unavailable anywhere else on the route.