June 9--A Rest Day

As always, since it wasn't a hike day, I went running around the town, and I have to say, although Ponferrada looks like a nice town from afar, when I got down to the nitty-gritty, it's basically like every other town in Spain: slowly dying.... 

You might not know, so let me tell you. I track all of my hikes on Strava, an app that maps your run, how fast you go, and also has things called segments. Segments are basically just areas or routes that are run often enough that Strava starts keeping track of the fastest times that they are done. It’s fun because I’ve gotten in the top 10 multiple times on segments that are on the Camino, but whenever I am in a town and we aren’t hiking, I look for the segments in the area that I think I have a shot of doing well, go out, and run them. It’s super cool because then you can look on your account on the app and it has a page that will show you all your achievements and top 10 scores on segments you’ve done. It’s a weird thing to care about, but it’s super cool.

Anyway, after I went running (I tried to recruit other people to go with me, but no one wanted to) we all headed to the castle that is a huge part of the tourism appeal of Ponferrada. If you ask me, and I may be wrong, it feels kind of like a tourist trap. The whole draw of the castle is that it used to be used by the Knights Templar as a hub for all the knights who were protecting pilgrims along the Camino. But the Castle grounds have not been used since then – since the Knights Templar fell out of favor and disbanded around the 1310s, in the 1400s and 1500s, the castle grounds were built on and used by Spanish nobles. And then the castle fell into ruin until 1992 when they “restored it.” Having seen REAL, NATURAL castle ruins in Germany and Ireland, I question how much of this castle is original ESPECIALLY from the knights Templar, and what was part of the “restoration.” We were all given a pamphlet at the beginning of the tour, and it said that the knights built stuff to sustain their order when they moved into this area “very little of which is left on the grounds today.” Then, later in tour, you find out they haven’t even been able to FIND remnants of the vegetable garden, wine and food storage or other buildings apparently built by the knights; they just know they existed from records that have survived. So yes, was it a cool castle, for sure 100%, but it might as well have been a Medieval Times Castle for it’s validity of being “original.” The Knights Templar do seem pretty cool though because they were such a huge thing for two to three centuries in the Medieval times. 

After the castle, we found a supermarket that was actually open (unlike yesterfay where they were all permanently closed) and I got a salad. Like just a regular salad, and MAN do I miss just a good ol’ regular salad. They are just so CLASSIC. Of course, lunch was ruined by the fact that we got rained on the whole walk back to our hotel and we got SOAKED, but since we didn’t have anything on the schedule for the next three hours, there was no rush to be presentable or anything. 

The excursion we had at 3 pm was… alright. I don’t know, maybe it is because I compare everything to the super fun stuff we have been doing (like the caves or the beach), but we got into town and our teacher told us we could choose to stay in the town or come up and look at some caves that hermits used to live in a mile and a half up a hill. I opted to stay in town and draw peacefully for an hour with a few other people while everyone else went up there. It was nice to have a moment of peace to just draw and relax and observe a small Spanish town. Plus, the bar we sat next to was SO CUTE and cool! I think sometimes it’s good to just sit and ponder and let your mind wander. No need to talk or plan or strategize, just meditate with no specific thought process. It was very relaxing. 

After everybody came back, we went into a church, and although the church wasn’t anything spectacular, it did have pretty good acoustics and an enthusiastic volunteer running it who loved to hear us sing, so we sang a bunch of hymns in four-part harmony which was really fun and just another relaxing activity. 
            

Other than that, there just wasn’t much that we did. It was nice to rest and just take a day off, no pressure to go anywhere or do anything.