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Camino Finisterre Day 7: Finisterre to Lires – mainly Jane in Spain

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Wednesday 8 May 2024 – It was clear, immediately we awoke, that I was not going to be able to cope with a 17km  walk, even if it were on the straight and level, which it very emphatically wouldn’t be.

I was therefore going to take a cab. As Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Given that the forecast for the day was benign – sunny, mid-20s Celsius, It seemed selfish to rob Jane of the chance to hike what we had been told was a beautiful walk by suggesting she come with me. I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough efectivo (cash) and so we buggered about for a bit with how to get to an ATM first, but the hotel reassured us that the fare would be just €20, which was fine.

The hotel staff, I have to say, were magnificent in their support for us, and in particular me. They provided isotonic drinks, arranged the taxi, allowed me to have a late check-out so I could stay in my room and thus within sprinting distance of a loo, and took our bags down to the taxi (I’m not sure why the normal baggage pick-up didn’t work, but that’s not important right now). So I was entirely sorted and comfortable with the plan for the day.

The only ripples in the otherwise smooth current of my transfer to Lires occurred at the “getting into the taxi” stage.  The taxi had turned up and been loaded and the hotel manager had come with me down the steps, but the taxi driver was Over There, apparently having a chat with someone.  When he turned round, it transpired that he’d been importuned by the leader of a group of three people who couldn’t be arsed to order their own taxi, as they wanted to get back to Finisterre town.  So it was that three somewhat overweight people joined me in the cab. I don’t know where they were from (somewhere like the Philippines, at a guess), but their leader was obviously accustomed to taking things over and running them his own way. He even asked the driver what would be the fare to Santiago, which alarmed me. But they eventually got out Finisterre and left the driver to take me to Lires.

That’s my contribution to the day. Let me hand you over to Jane, who has a much more interesting narrative.

Secure in the knowledge that Steve was all set, I started out with a spring in my step into a glorious morning. Blue skies, a cool breeze and beautiful valedictory views of O Semaforo, the lighthouse, and Cape Finisterre.

There were not many peregrinos walking in either direction so I was able to take my time as I retraced our steps of yesterday back down the Cape into the town of Finisterre; the views and especially the colour of the water in places were wonderful.

Curious to see nasturtium flowers running wild, nowhere near any gardens!

The route led up through the town past some colourful artwork then out into open country.

From our previous experiences on the Camino we are used to the kilometre-posts showing distances to key points (usually Santiago for the main paths, or Finisterre or Muxia for those heading to the coast). On this road, between the twin “end-points” of the Camino, Finisterre and Muxia, they do things differently: as peregrinos might be travelling between the two points in either direction, they simply make sure you continue heading the right way!

The going at this point was quiet country roads through farmland and tiny hamlets. Lots of horreos – some even being used for their original purpose!

I was quite pleased when, around halfway through my walk, the nature of the way changed from open country – it was getting hot! – to shady woodland paths

although I was mystified by the appearance of small pilgrim rock “statues” all of the same general design with a stick for a staff. They were perched on the kilometre-posts, sitting on the verges and the walls, for quite a distance. Then the mystery was solved when I passed a ramshackle building proclaiming itself to be “The House of Pilgrims” and displaying a bewildering selection of the little stone pilgrims!

Soon the way opened up views of the coast and the sea

and continued through woodland (mostly pine, a relief after the relentless eucalyptus)

to the outskirts of the village of A Canosa. It was at this point that my personal GPS map, courtesy of our organisers Walk The Camino, let me down. The map has a black line (sometimes more than one if there is a choice of route) which exactly indicates the route we should take. At a T-junction, the black line went left, the signposts most emphatically went right. Since we had always found the black line to be a reliable and sometimes preferable route to the direction markers, I decided to follow it.

This proved to be a mistake as the path went from bad, to worse

to impenetrable, so I had to retrace my steps and shamefacedly follow the arrows… which led through the village and onto a much better path which eventually rejoined my black line. Ah well, serves me right for trying to be clever!

Eventually I reached the outskirts of my destination, Lires

and our hotel

where I found Steve with his taxi story to tell!

[Steve again…]

Once we were reunited, we spent a little time resting in the room, me because I was still feeling somewhat ropy and Jane because she’d just toiled over 17km in hot sunshine,  As ever, this led us to fall foul of the Spanish eating calendar and the local restaurant had stopped serving until 7pm.  Our hotel does have its own restaurant, but its closed on Wednesdays.  However, the friendly and helpful chap at front desk sorted out a couple of snacky items which, as it turned out, were all we needed for the rest of the day.

And so to the morrow: for me to walk it would be too ambitious, based on our experiences so far – weather maybe a degree cooler, but with a reasonable ascent and steep descent to be undertaken – for me to contemplate it.  So the profound hope is that the hotel can help us with a taxi, and we’ll travel independently and meet up in Muxia.  Why not come back soon and find out how it went?

 

Camino Finisterre Days 5 & 6: Sick Transit, Glorious Monday – and Tuesday

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Tuesday 7 May 2024 – The observant among you will notice – because you read this thing daily, don’t you? – that there was no entry for Monday 6 May.  And yet, given the apparently improving weather, you have a perfect right to expect a load of photos and my usual amusing commentary to accompany them.  We did walk yesterday, and indeed took photos, but force majeure has made it difficult for me to update you until now.  During Sunday night, I was stricken with what my brother, in his blog pages, might call “the collywobbles”. I am less euphemistic.

Reader, I got the shits.

My fault, I suppose, for eating a salad, when one is continually enjoined to avoid raw vegetables when travelling in the more suspect parts of The Foreign, but I had let my guard down, based, I suppose, on the seven weeks of safely eating salads in northern Spain when we walked the Camino Francés.

I didn’t feel too bad at the outset, so we decided to walk to Finisterre, partially on the basis of the weather forecast

and the view out of our window.

The route out of Corcubión was steep; we took a small Brierley recommended variation, which took us past the Capela de Santo Antonio

and a very appealing view back over the town.

We passed another couple of lavadoiros, again showing little evidence of modern usage

and, as we breasted the rise, we caught our first view of the lighthouse which marks the end of the Camino.

The next village on our route was Estorde, where we saw a couple of unusual horreos, one painted white

and one that was actually in use, as its door was open.

I suspect that horreos, where they are usable, are like garages in the UK – never used for their originally-intended purpose.

Shortly after, we reached a town called Sardiñeiro, which was not at all crowded, but did have a couple of engaging points: one very nicely-decorated house

and someone’s remarkable garage.

Its owner bade us come in for a chat, but we demurred, mainly because we were near a coffee stop, which was, to be honest, a more alluring prospect.

After Sardiñeiro, our path was in decent condition

but was, once again, uphill, and I was beginning to labour at this point as a result of the depredations of my digestive system.  There were some nice views such as this of the town of Finisterre,

this of an attractive little cove,

and some quirky things beside the path

(I assume that some kind soul left this for us peregrinos; unsurprisingly, I really wasn’t attracted to this paella) but they failed to lift my spirits much. We made our very slow way past the sweeping beach at the top of the Finisterre bay, the Playa de Llagosteira,

with its unusual installation, dediated to garnering public support for keeping the beach clean,

and toiled along a very nicely-laid pathway through what might have been everglades or might just have been waterlogged land, I’m not quite sure which.

We soon reached Finisterre, or Fisterra as it’s called in the Galician language (Galego, if you’re from Galicia, or Gallego if from the rest of Spain) and discovered that it’s a great deal more extensive than I’d realised.  It seemed to take for ever at my enforced slow pace, but we eventually reached our rather nice and very boutiquey hotel, Banco Azul.

Fortunately, they had a room ready for us, despite it being only just after midday, and even more fortunately it was on the ground floor, as I really don’t think I had the energy left to hoick my suitcase up any stairs.  The 12km had taken us three-and-three-quarter hours, and I was done in, so spent the rest of the day trying to recover. Jane went out though to get our official certificates to show we have completed the walk from Santiago de Compostella to Finisterre.

This left us with just the 3km to cover to the “0 km” marker today.  We could, I suppose, have taken a taxi, but I thought I felt well enough to walk it, despite it being almost ceaselessly uphill.

Shortly after we set out, we passed the Igrexa de Santa María das Areas

which, to our surprise, was open, so looked in.  Almost all of the small local churches we’ve passed in northern Spain have been what we’ve come to call “Spanish Open”, i.e. closed. But here there was a lady volunteer who was part of a team keeping the church open in the mornings. It’s an attractive interior,

with the chapel of Christ of the Golden Beard

 

with the usual cemetery at the back.

(and it was an opportunity for me to take a rest, as I was labouring even more intensely than yesterday).

There are a couple of other things of note on the short journey to the cape:  a pilgrim statue

and a “fishermen’s cemetery”, with several cavities that, presumably, enable a fisherman to be buried in view of the sea.

A less momentous installation awaited us as we neared our destination for the day.

and then we had arrived

at the famous lighthouse at the end of the cape,

where one can find the 0 km marker

various symbolic statuary such as the boot and the cross

and, the Lord be thankit,

our hotel, O Semaforo, which is small but perfectly-formed after being modified from its original purpose as a marine observatory.  It’s also part, we suspect, of a group which also includes the Banco Azul.  Again, fortunately, they  allowed us into our room with minimal waiting around.

There’s a lot to see here, but I was in no condition to be out and about at this stage, so Jane took herself off to find food and to refresh her acquaintance with the site, which we’d visited last Autumn, only by bus.  Above are some of the photos she took. On that occasion I hadn’t got my drone with me, but today I did, so, having rested, I whizzed it up to capture an aerial view.

That’s it for Phase I, then; we’ve reached Finisterre and our onward journey takes us to Muxia, further up the coast, an alternative end point of the Camino, also with its own 0 km marker.  Given my condition, I doubt that I’ll be able to walk it, but we have A Plan to ensure that you miss a minimum of the Camino scenery.  Keep your eyes peeled on these pages to find out how it unfolds.

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.