Wednesday, 8 June
Our last morning in León amounted to a couple of hours waiting for the bus that would take us west to Astorgas. Before we left, we found a cafe. The presence of such a thing is obviously not rare in Spain. Our presence in a cafe, though, is a bit rarer – we seem to prefer tapas y bebidas in the evening, sticking to the municipal fountain water in the morning.
Anyway, this cafe was a welcome exception. We ordered two coffees which, of course, came with a free, liquid tapa: a zumito, diminutive of ‘juice’ – a little orange juice. It’s a shame English doesn’t have diminutives like this. Well, I suppose one could call our free drink a ‘juicelet’ or ‘orangekins’.
But there was more. Leche frita was the free (solid) tapa of choice for us both. This item exhibits such untrammelled genius that it should be illegal: it is fried custard. They are simply balls of breaded pure custard that have been dunked in hot oil, forming a delicate crust. My plea to the world is for this foodstuff to become as hegemonic as the French croissant, because it is better.
We then journeyed to Astorga on a fairly short bus ride. The landscape was unremarkable in comparison to the Picos mountains, and the highway has a Camino path (presumably the Frances which Bea’s cousins and uncle are currently braving) running parallel to it for some time. The scenery is flat, but not as arid as things get further south towards Salamanca.
Astorga is very small. Its inhabitants are about ten thousand in number, but the cathedral is massive, in spite of this. It also boasts a bishop’s palace by Gaudí a few steps to the southeast. The latter building is a much-photographed but curiously inept piece of architecture. The whole thing is built of one stone, without a single cill or doorcase in a different material to relieve the blandness. It ends up looking like a Disney set!
For lunch, we sat in the surroundings of the cathedral and ate our pre-made bocadillos (pre-made by us, naturally). The filler consisted of sobrasada and some piquillo peppers. The meat spread was is edible…it consisted of pulverised pork and pimenton spice, and some form of acidity. The pulverised meat contained threads of flesh which stick in your teeth. You could think of it as meat candy floss. Bea and I subsequently had a debate where I contended that offal is more dignified than sobrasada, as it is at least recognisable, and she contended that she had had much better sobrasada than this. I’m not sure who won the argument.
We ate little else during the day apart from a second round of the same sandwiches and some snacks in the evening. We did order one rather good sherry-based vermut in a bar which came with a slice of baguette sporting a single marinated anchovy. Not that easy to share.
It was a slow day, and we enjoyed walking around the quiet streets and visiting the cathedral (though a bit late for our architectural tastes). There were a disproportionately large number of peregrinos present for the smallness of the town. Personally, I think the best aspect of Astorgas is its unusual topography. The town sits on a sort of mesa, a flat-topped hill. This means it has excellent views over the surrounding countryside, all brownish and dotted with green, with an ultramarine band of mountains on the horizon.
At night, we returned to our Airbnb, a strange flat hidden inside a former garage. The decor was ‘domestic’ in a rather unfortunate way: the furniture was dark veneer all around, topped with production-line sculptures. Rather than a sofa, there was pair of upholstered armchairs – the recliner didn’t work. The oven was a brown plastic relic which ticked loudly. All of this would have been fine, but we could feel the ghost of the relative this annex had no doubt been created for. We enjoyed our evening in nevertheless, and were at least glad there was no one staying in the other bedrooms.
The big dark veneer dresser in the living room contained a ridiculous amount of cut glass drinking vessels. Out of these, we drank our €2 organic Tempranillo as we watched a preparatory documentary about a wine-exporting city somewhere to the west…
– Alfie