Albergue in Villavieja

[candocamino]

We will be staying in the Albergue in Villavieja next week for our 1st night on the Camino de Invierno. Does anyone know whether there are cooking facilities there?

I understand there's no shop in Villavieja so any suggestions of good food to carry in for dinner and breakfast (and more generally on the Camino de Invierno) are welcome!

 

[peregrina2000]

We will be staying in the Albergue in Villavieja next week for our 1st night on the Camino de Invierno. Does anyone know whether there are cooking facilities there?

I understand there's no shop in Villavieja so any suggestions of good food to carry in for dinner and breakfast (and more generally on the Camino de Invierno) are welcome!

Hi, candocamino,
Welcome to the forum! Have you seen our wonderful forum guide? It is updated every year by faithful forum members and is a great resource.

https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/resources/invierno-forum-guide.535/download

The Villavieja albergue just opened recently, but a forum member gave me the info for the guide — there is a kitchen, and advance notice is essential.

I didn’t carry any more food on the Invierno than usual — I bring nuts, yoghurt and fruit for walking, and also eat a meal out at the end of the walk. The typical end stages are all good sized towns with plenty of facilities, Villavieja is really an exception to that rule. Soldón is also that way, but the owners will go buy food for you and have it there if you notify them. More info in the guide.

Let us know if you have more questions, we Invierno alums are a very loyal and enthusiastic bunch.

Buen camino, Laurie

 

[alaskadiver]

We’ll be starting on the 17th(we leave here exactly 2 weeks from today!). We plan to just find something at the store in Ponferrada to cook in Villavieja. Probably some instant rice (might bring our bag n boil) and some frozen chicken breasts that we can defrost when we arrive. It’s a short first day walk so anything will keep. Might just get some hearty sandwiches that we can reheat.
Along the way we also carry bread, jamón, and goat cheese to eat for breakfast or lunch. We freeze a bar of chocolate at night and it keeps it from melting during the day. Usually lasts us a couple days.

 

[candocamino]

Hi both, thanks for the replies.

We've read the helpful guide, thanks. We've given advance notice so all will hopefully be well. We've actually recently booked almost every night so far and had no difficulties at all, which was a relief given the warnings on here.

Your respective approaches to food sound similar to what we had planned, so that's good.

We are looking forward to starting on Friday!

 

[candocamino]

Now that we've finished - it was fantastic, by the way - I'll do a brief post summarising our stages, accommodation etc just in case that helps others. I thought it worth mentioning in this thread now though that the albergue in Villavieja was great. Amazing views, wifi, well stocked kitchen, washing machine (and soap) etc. It was perfectly placed for us after catching the 830am train from Santiago to Ponferrada and starting after lunch.

The only issue was that there was no heating or hot water. We had been flagged down walking through Vilalibre and a guy gave us keys after asking if we were the peregrinos staying at the albergue. That meant we let ourselves but the heating wasn't on and when we contacted the guy who gave us the keys he said the place was run by an association and he didn't have contact details. A bit of a shame because there is a clearly set up heating system using wood pellets/bio-mass but we didn't want to play around with it. There were plenty of blankets though and we just had cold showers.

Overall, we'd definitely recommend the albergue but suggest checking about the heating in advance.