Day 23 on the Camino Frances, Ponferrada to Villafranca de Bierzo

The route to Villafranca de Bierza passes by an OLD church (many old churches), many vineyards, pre-Roman era ruins, and a lot of small prosperous busy towns.

We started hiking through greener and greener countryside, and it seemed like the area became more prosperous.

This day the Camino went through many towns, and they were closer together and much more prosperous. We finally came to Villafranca de Bierzo, at 24.1 km. Bierzo refers to a region that had long existed for its mining and commercial activity, and was briefly its own province. Villafranca refers to the town early charter granting rights to foreigners, often French settlers, to encourage immigration because the population was often killed off in regional wars. The rights granted often were relief or exception from taxes.

I stayed in a place (above) which had been a convent, and now operates are an albergue/hotel.

The interior certainly looks majestic, and I had a nice room. I got a call from the front desk that some of the nuns had been bad, and needed to be spanked, and would I help with that. Oh wait, that was a Monty Python movie. The nuns are gone.