Invierno - River Sil en Route to Solden

I'd never really heard of the Invierno route Robo - sounds beautiful. It says it starts from Ponferrada and is an alternative to the normal route? Would you recommend?

davejsy said:

I'd never really heard of the Invierno route Robo - sounds beautiful. It says it starts from Ponferrada and is an alternative to the normal route? Would you recommend?

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100%. It's a great route. I have a daily blog of it here with video. https://robscamino.com/day-40-ponferrada-to-villaveja/

Just watched first video Robo, looks amazing! And your website is awesome, will take some time to have a look through it in more detail when time permits.

I see in the video you stay in Albergues. I'm planning on staying in Albergues, but I must admit I'm a bit worried for a few reasons:

- I'm a light sleeper, and you hear all of these stories about people snoring which I really struggle with. I have bought some earplugs but must say I'm not overly comfortable in them.
- I generally have to get up to go to the toilet during the night, again this is a bit worrisome thinking about it in a room full of sleeping strangers!! I'd worry about waking people up especially if you're on the top bunk ect.
- Lastly which might be a bit a bit pretentious, but I do get wound up by people if they aren't respectful of other people at all, and this could be from poor hygiene to just being noisy etc - do you find that much of a problem or are people generally respectful?

Any tips for staying in the Albergues would be most welcome! I see you went for the corner bunk at the far end of the room in the video!

I'm not on a shoestring budget, but I certainly can't really afford to stay in hotels every day, and I wouldn't really want to as I want to be as much a part of the Camino as it will be of me. I'm quite used to sleeping outside and I often spend nights in the car with the dogs and my godson on some of our road trips, and these tend to be some of my favourite memories - so it's not like I need creature comforts all the time.

I stay in a very broad range of places Dave. In the past I always stayed in modest private rooms (some that were in Albergues) and medium range Hotels, Casa Rurals. This time I intentionally wanted to try a range of Albergues. I had the same concerns as you in relation to communal sleeping arrangements. But it was all fine. A bit of snoring here and there, but everyone was respectful. So I did a mix, ranging from Donativo Albergues, modest private rooms, to a couple of flashy Hotels.