And down….

Going down…

Now it stands to reason if you’re leaving the highest point that it would be literally all down hill from here!

There is some climbing in the coming days but today was down and down and down.

My quads are singing….

Historians are undecided about who put Cruz de Ferro here or why, but it went up in about the 11th century.

I got up a little early and practically ran to this point to get to it before it got overrun. It was still pretty crowded. Lots of people come to see it, even outside of doing the Camino. In one of the shots you can see the parking lot across the street where cars and vans who drive people up here park.

The idea behind the stones is to symbolically leave behind whatever you brought with you that you no longer want to carry going forward.

After actually arriving in Santiago, many people would consider Cruz de Ferro the high-point of the trip. It also just happens to be the actual high point. At 1504m above sea level, Cruz de Ferro is the highest point on the Camino Frances.

I left my two rocks there, adding to the pile of stones left by pilgrims for hundreds of years. (I wrote about my two rocks in the pre-Camino section).

And so here it is – the moment we’ve been waiting for (or maybe just me), I finally reached Cruz de Ferro (the iron cross).

May 22 – Rabanal del Camino to Molinaseca (24.6 km)

Big day today.