Author Archives: Steve Walker

About Steve Walker

Once a tech in-house PR type, now professional photo/videographer and recreational drone pilot. Violinist. Flautist. Occasional conductor. Oenophile.

Camino Finisterre Day 4: Olveiroa to Corcubión – and the first sunshine!

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Sunday 5 May 2024 – As we awoke, the rain was still lashing down; however, the forecast was for a gradual improvement in the weather over the course of the day – from “Rain” to “Showers”. This meant that we had a day in prospect during which we could actually walk a stage of the Camino Finisterre without getting drenched! The only uncertainty revolved around how long to wait before we left; we had some 19 km to complete, which translates to around four hours’ actual walking, if we get on with it, so we had some latitude in selecting a departure time. Or so we thought; actually, we have discovered that neither of us feels at all comfortable in just sitting around waiting for the weather to improve. So we set off after breakfast, just before 9am, into light rain, which didn’t stop me from taking lots of photos as we went, so this is a long, rambling post. If you’re pressed for time but want to know how it all went, you can watch the Relive video of the day.

Light the rain today might have been; but on turning the first corner, we came face to face with a demonstration of just how much rainwater had fallen from the sky over the preceding days.

The alert among you will have noted the Camino signpost to the right, suggesting that the route was through that torrent. I had taken the trouble to put waterproof socks on for the day, but I’m sure you’ll agree that there are limits – I wasn’t going to wade through that.  It was actually easy to work our way around it, but wherever we went, pretty much for the whole of the walk, we were accompanied by the sound of rushing water as the excess rainwater gushed off the hillsides.

Often, the storm gullies built into the path did their job well

but sometimes the amount of water had simply been too much.

You’ll have deduced by this stage that it was still raining, and there was a heavy mist at times

but the rain, thankfully, stayed generally light as we walked along. We passed the village of Hospital

at about 5km into the walk, which is the sort of minimum distance we consider it acceptable to stop for coffee, and passed a café which made it quite easy to decide to stop and fuel up.

Actually, we knew that this was serious and correct intelligence, and so were emotionally prepared for the shock of having to walk nearly ten miles between coffee stops, something I don’t believe we’ve ever done on our Camino adventures heretofore. So, coffee and a banana it was, and we got on our way.

We passed this rather odd poster.

Vákner?

With just 30km to go until we reach Finisterre, we passed a rather charming piece of entrepreneurial initiative.

An 11-year-old girl called (I think) Xioana, which would be promouned “Joanna” – or someone pretending to be one – was offering hand-painted shells for €2 on an honesty basis. Had I any coins, I might have been tempted; but I didn’t, so we moved on, albeit somewhat taken with the proposition.  Very soon after, we reached The Parting Of The Ways.

Left turn for Finisterre, right for Muxia.  As you’ll remember, having paid attention all along, we are headed to Finisterre, then along the coast to Muxia, before walking back to Santiago; so We Will Be Back on 12th May on our return journey.

We passed this facility at this point.

The steaming lake outside it was what interested me most.  It’s a facility run by Xallas Electricidad y Aleaciones (XEAL) and it contains two furnaces, one of which is among the largest in Europe, for the making of Ferrosilicon.

Oh.

Onwards, then…

We joined a path that would take us across country (i.e. not passing by any bars or cafés) all the way to Cee,

fundamentally a great surface to walk on, and one we think may be the result of resurfacing work. So, by and large, the going was good (not totally – see later) and –

was that the possibility of nice weather coming our way?  It had certainly stopped raining, which in itself was something to be cheerful about.

We passed the Petroglifos Pedra Ancha – petroglyphs. Among the reviews on Google for this rock was this gem: “you reach the stone and then you have to have skill and luck to identify the figures. We didn’t have it.”

Neither did we. Anyway, we were distracted by

SUNSHINE!

To counter our joy, we entered The Dark Woods Of The Vákner!

(Had I the necessary html skills, you would hear spine-chilling music at this point. However, it’s easy to infer from the very basic layout of these pages that I don’t.)

There is a mythical tale about the appearance of Vákner. The Armenian bishop of Arzendian
Mártir or Mártiros, who walked to Santiago de Compostela between 1491 and 1493 as a pilgrim, wrote about a “terrible, anthropoid lycanthropic beast” which would terrify pilgrims in this area. Rather than being terrified, we were somewhat dumbfounded to be overtaken by a Toyota Land Cruiser which clearly had punters in it who were looking for Vákner.

And find it, they did!

This monstrously frightening statue looms at you beside the track. Actually, it’s not frightening; it reminds me more of the body language of the conductor of my orchestra when he’s trying to get the French horns to play louder.

Also at this point is another crossroads, one which is even marked by a cross.

It is another point at which one can decide to make for either Finisterre or Muxia,

or just sit down and rest, I suppose. We pressed on towards Finisterre, and soon enough caught our first sight of our eventual destination for the day, Corcubión, with its neighbouring town, Cee. No, I don’t know how to pronounce the latter.

We had wonderful bursts of sunshine, some of them lasting for seconds on end and allowing for nice views of the surrounding countryside.

The path took us past the Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows

and into a section where plantations of the dreaded Eucalyptus trees seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon.

I say “dreaded” because the species was introduced at a time when the country needed wood; Eucalyptus grows straight and fast, and is ideal for logging.  It’s also hugely invasive, and the Spanish government no longer encourages its planting; but still there are huge areas of Eucalyptus, some formal plantations like we saw today and some where it’s self-seeded and very, very densely packed, hence displacing native species.

The other downside is the ravages perpetrated on the land by the logging process

and, more selfishly in this case, the damage done to the nice footpath surface by the logging lorries and machinery. For what seemed like several kilometres, the surface was broken, rocky and uncomfortable to walk on.  Still, I suppose people have got to make a living…..

We passed another chapel, that of St. Peter the Martyr

which had an eponymous spring nearby,

and, shortly after, the Cross of the Armada,

whose significance is, I’m afraid, not something I am an expert on.

Generally, the path and the countryside looked almost as if we were on Chobham Common at home, with broom, gorse and heather in abundance.

It was all very pleasant, even if the clouds had temporarily closed in again.

The final part of the path as it leads to Cee is potentially daunting, if one looks at its elevation profile.

The two-kilometre stretch from 16km drops 280 metres quite steeply.

We’d both been concerned about how we’d get on, as this stretch has a bad rep for being steep and rocky, and walking downhill can be more challenging than uphill.  We need not really have worried; it was certainly steep, but the surface was excellent, which is what gave us the thought that perhaps the path had recently been resurfaced. The walk down also gave us a nice view over towards Corcubión.

We made our way steadily down into Cee, and, although the quads were burning a little as we reached the bottom, on balance I think it would have been pretty tough had we been going in the other direction.

Having reached the bottom, we’d covered over 13km and it had been over two and a half hours since our last coffee, which made a coffee’n’beer stop at the first available café a matter of high priority.  After refreshing ourselves, we pressed on into Cee

with its beach (that, frankly, looks better from a distance) and its view over neighbouring Corcubión

with the intriguing artwork in the foreground. Cee is a strange place; it has an attractive jumble of houses

and a terrible beach.  However, there is a huge amount of construction work going on, so one trusts It Will Be Lovely Once They’ve Finished.

The Camino track into Corcubión offers a great view over the place

and its waterside artwork which sort of corresponds with with the one we saw in Cee

We soon found our pension, the Casa da Balea,

which is charmingly whale-themed, as one might expect from the name, even down to the welcome mat.

It’s a very lovely place, but doesn’t offer a restaurant, so we headed out only to find that, once again, we’d fallen foul of the Spanish dining circadian rhythms.  We could easily have had a drink, but there was no food on offer.

We went back to Casa Balea, consoled ourselves with tea and possessed our souls in patience until about 7.30pm, when we went out to a tavern called O Ribeiro which we knew (because Jane had asked) would serve food from 8pm.  It’s an engaging place, decorated with massive numbers of ornithological origami

and other interesting decor, such as the beer pumps.

After a reasonably hearty meal, we pottered about this attractive town taking the sort of pictures that one does after a couple of substantial G&Ts. One or two are worth sharing…

Tomorrow sees us embark on a short hike to Finisterre, and we may even be bathed in sunshine as we walk! It’s worth emphasising that our target is the town of Finisterre; the real end of the Camino – kilometre zero – is at the lighthouse, a few kilometres beyond, where we’ll be the day after. But for now, even the simple prospect of a day without rain is something to be looked forward to with anticipation.

Camino Finisterre Day 3, Mazaricos to Olveiroa – Not quite a cop-out

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Saturday 4 May 2024 – Star Wars Day, no less, and we woke up to find that the force was emphatically not with us for the moment; yesterday’s deluge had continued overnight and showed no sign of abating.

We’d decided that our options were (a) wait until the afternoon to see if the rain abated and walk the remaining 5.5km to our next hotel or (b) take a taxi.  We decided that plan A was preferred and so settled ourselves down in the hotel’s bar, which was quite lively, to see if we could wait out the rain.

As well as read the papers, we occasionally checked various weather forecasting websites, all of which agreed that the morning would be a write-off, hiking-wise, but offered varying amounts of optimism for the afternoon.  It was supposed to rain solidly until midday, but actually it didn’t; there was a short period when the skies cleared and the rain stopped.

We noticed a bunch of peregrinos across the road and it turned out that they were waiting for a bus.  At around 11am, one duly turned up and they all boarded it – its destination was, ultimately, Finisterre, so these had obviously decided that discretion was the better part of valour; their choice was vindicated as the rains swept in again and carried on relentlessly. (Later on we perused the bus timetable on the reception desk, only to find that there was one bus per day and that had been it!). Every so often I’d look up, wondering if things had improved weather-wise – but the rain was still lashing down.

Around about 2pm, we were (a) beginning to wonder if the forecasters had got it wrong and (b) hungry, so we had lunch – a tuna-and-tomato concoction and lentil soup, both of which were delicious.  Our starting lunch was, of course, the signal for the rain to ease, and so immediately we’d finished eating we decided that we should just jolly well get on with it, rather than wimping out by taking a taxi. We set out on the short walk to Olveiroa, the next town along, and I have to say that it felt good to be out walking, even the short distance we would cover. I took a couple of valedictory photos of the area by the hotel, where, for some reason, there were a couple of cow statues

and many interesting examples of a pollarding technique whereby individual branches had been curled around to meet neighbouring branches, and fused in with them.

Then we set off, in weather conditions that I bet the Galicians have a word for – something between fog, drizzle and light rain.

Since our route was simply walking along the road between the two towns, I wasn’t expecting there to be anything worth photographing; but actually I was wrong.  There wasn’t a plethora of scenes, but one or two things caught our attention as we went.  For example, there were many fine stone-built horreos on display.

including, near our destination, a magnificent specimen.

There was another example of the pollarding technique we saw in the town.

 

There was one odd (now apparently abandoned) house, on stilts

and we wondered what the thinking was behind the design.  I suppose it might have been to keep the building away from the ground to avoid rising damp? But none of the other buildings around had this design. Though avoiding damp must be a local imperative, given our experience of the last couple of days.  I’m quite impressed with the general capability of the land and the drainage to cope with the deluge we’d seen in the previous 24 hours – basically, things were just wet and there was very little indication of the amount of rain we’d had.  Except in a couple of places, where even ploughed fields coudn’t cope with the volume of water that had fallen out of the sky.

The rain actually completely stopped after a while, and when we got to Olveiroa

we were even confident enough in the clemency of the weather to stop for a quick coffee (OK, and a tactical stamp for our credenciales to ensure that we got the required two stamps a day for our Compostela at the far end). And shortly thereafter, we reached our hotel for the night, the very charming Pension As Pias.

We were greeted warmly by the proprietors who gave us a welcoming chunk of tortilla which we decided should be consumed in the bar, accompanied by G&T and writing up of the day so far.  It’s an interesting bar

(note the wonderful bar stools!) with a great view over no fewer than three tidy horreos

and it’s clear that the owners have put a lot of thought – and whimsy – into the decor.  There are many nice touches – photos on the ceilings, odd bits of farm machinery as bar furniture and so forth, and bar tables that add to the gaiety of the place.

The restaurant was crowded and buzzing at lunchtime and it looks to be a generally popular and well-run place.

The village, too, is interesting – tiny but photogenic, with another church-surrounded-by-cemetery

and more horreos than you can shake a stick at.

And so to tomorrow: we have just two more days before we reach Finisterre, and our destination tomorrow is the seaside town of Corcubion, some 19km away.  The weather outlook is for some showers (well, there’s a suprise!) but we should be able to arrive there somewhat less bedraggled than we were when we got to Mazaricos.  Come back to these pages in due course, and you’ll find out how it all went.

Camino Finisterre Day 2: It begins – to rain

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Friday 3 May 2024 – The weather forecast for today was unequivocal: Accuweather reckoned that up to 9am there would be showers, and after that there would be rain. The Met Office was largely in tune with this.  Here is its forecast for today – and, since it matters, tomorrow.

It’s not the sort of forecast that encourages one to go out walking, is it? Even more ominous was Accuweather’s forecast for Olveiroa, our destination for tomorrow.

Its Yellow Warning – “Drenching Rain!” – was timed from midday today until midday tomorrow.

So….

Our planned schedule for today and tomrrow looked like this:

Walk 19 km from Negreira (1) to As Maronas (2) where we would call our hotel, which is located in Mazaricos (3) to be collected.  Then tomorrow, we would be set down again at As Maronas to walk 15km to Olveiroa (4).  Thus we would complete in two days the 34-kilometre stretch that the John Brierley book for the Camino Finisterre documents as a single stage.

During the night, I tried to persuade myself that walking this in “drenching” rain might be OK. Jane had obviously pondered the same prospect and beat me by a few milliseconds when she suggested we might consider taking a taxi rather than undergo a certain soaking, something I had been screwing up my courage to suggest myself.  So we agreed – a taxi it would be. It was raining outside, which made the plan seem even more sound.

Our bags still had to be ready by 8am to be transported to our next overnight stop, so we packed everything away in them, took them down to be collected and went into breakfast, thinking we had a nice leisurely morning, then could call for a taxi later on. After breakfast, we sat in our room doing leisurely things like reading the papers while outside, annoyingly, the rain stopped.  The guilt about wimping out rose and rose in both of us until, after about an hour of it stubbornly refusing to rain, the shame forced us out of the hotel on foot, telling ourselves that we could always call for a cab from the next coffee stop should it be necessary.

It was about 0920 when we left Negreira in very light rain, past the Monument of the Emigrant

and through the arch marking the edge of town.

Our route wound steadily uphill past the San Julian church (another one featuring a baroque tower and a relatively extensive cemetery)

and gave us a valedictory view back over Negreira

before diving off into woodland.

I was a bit worried that the mist we could see presaged rain heavier than the light stuff falling on us at this point, but it didn’t, and so we were able to stride out feeling glad that we had actually embarked on the walk after all.  As we went, we passed many, many eucalyptus trees, with some of them showing the red colour of new season growth.

Everywhere was covered in moss, indicating that the moist weather we were experiencing was not at all unusual; and there was pennywort growing in places.

We also passed a lavadoiro, which would once have been used by local folk to do their washing

although the copious amounts of algae floating in this one indicated that it was no longer in use. We also saw a cunning use of fencing as a way of growing vines.

At 11am, we were some 8km into our walk when our luck with the weather ran out and the rain started to intensify.  I grabbed one quick shot of a matched pair of peregrinos in front of us to add to our collection

and then it started to piss down in a very serious way. At first it didn’t seem to matter much; although our trousers were getting wet, our waterproofs seemed to be doing a decent job. But then the wind sprang up and our winding route meant that it was first in our faces, then at our side and finally behind us.  This ensured that water dripped down into our shoes and by the time we’d covered 13km and got to Vilaserio (point 1a above) we were wet through, with the conditions having defeated what waterproofs we had.  So when we saw an Albergue, Casa Vella, by the route, we decided that enough was enough.  We went inside (as did a few other soused peregrinos)

where we were warmly welcomed and provided with coffee. We were wet through, and couldn’t even change into spare socks or footwear, as we’d carefully put these into our suitcases this morning to be transported; we wouldn’t need them, since we were taking a taxi, remember? Hah!

The lovely lady in charge of the albergue delightfully got someone to call for a taxi for us and so, after a nice chat with an Australian lady who would be staying there the night, we departed for Mazaricos, at a pace which demonstrated the contempt in which the driver held the notion of speed limits. The taxi bill was €45, but that was a price worth paying, as the conditions had become very windy to accompany the lashing rain.  So it was that we arrived at Casa Jurjo in Mazaricos, somewhat before they were ready for us, as it turned out; but after a coffee we were able to check in and get out of our soaking wet clothes – and into a nice warm bath, in Jane’s case; we had a decently large room with an expansive bathroom.

Whilst we gradually dried off and warmed up, the weather outside continued to vindicate our decision not to walk any further,

 

and makes an extremely moot point of a decision about what to undertake tomorrow.  It looks likely to continue lashing down until tomorrow afternoon, so should we just forget the idea of walking from As Maronas and take a taxi direct to Olveira?  Or wait until the afternoon in the hope that the rains ease and we can contemplate walking the 6km directly to our next accommodation – our waterproofs allow us to take some wet weather, just not a deluge.  As I write, the time approaches the cocktail hour when we could go down to the hotel bar and debate the idea over a pre-dinner drink – and bear in mind, of course, that we’ll be returning to this section of the walk and these hotels as we walk back to Santiago from Finisterre and Muxia.

I suspect that whatever decision we reach is likely to be modified in the light of the actual weather.  I will leave this narrative on that cliffhanger. The only way you’ll find out What We Did Next is to come back to these pages in due course.