The Camino El Salvador is a short pilgrimage trail that begins in Leon and winds through the mountains before ending in the Asturias capital of Oviedo. Apparently this route started when a king built his new cathedral dedicated to Christ in Oviedo. However those pesky pilgrims continued shuffling along the Camino Frances on their way to Santiago. So the king introduced a new rule to force pilgrims to make a detour to Oviedo, piously declaiming that Quien va a Santiago y no al Salvador, visita al criado y deja al Señor” (Whoever goes to Saint James and not to the Saviour, visits the servant and misses the Master). In any event, it meant a lot of business for inns and monasteries on both the new route north and then the Primitivo route which runs from Oviedo to Melide in Galicia where it merges with the Frances.
Leon itself is a big city with a superb centre and cathedral to match. I managed to visit the cathedral twice, once in the afternoon and then the next morning to get the light through the amazing stained glass.
And it's not just the cathedral - the Casa Botines isn't bad either.
Still this is not just a sightseeing trip - this is a serious business of pilgrimage so one needed to get to the point where the Frances and the Salvador split. Fittingly, it's marked with yellow arrows.
The first day is nothing spectacular. The first 8km or so is walking through the suburbs of Leon before one gets to open countryside. Then the scenery improves but the end point of this first stage is La Robla which is disfigured by a huge coal power station. La Robla is not a tourist destination with only the albergue open for business. Rather than stay somewhere a bit disappointing on the first night, I grabbed a taxi for a ten minute ride out to a nice hotel in El Valle, to the east of La Robla.
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