Category Archives: Uncategorised

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

3 Replies

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

1 Reply

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.

 

Camino Finisterre Day 1: It Begins: Santiago to Negreira

5 Replies

Thursday May 2 2024 – From the relatively relaxed schedules of the previous days, we suddenly snapped into Camino Time: alarm call at 0630, breakfast around 0730, bags ready to be collected for transfer at 0800, on the road as soon as may be after breakfast. It wasn’t too brutal and we seemed to swing quite smoothly into what will likely be the daily rhythm that governs the next fortnight or so.

The breakfast room at the monastery was pretty much as you might imagine a monastic refectory to look.

Breakfast was served from 0730. We got there shortly after that time to find that it was very crowded and borderline chaotic, and we thought: “why?”  Surely these were people who had largely arrived in Santiago; why were they up and doing so early when one would think there was no need?  Surely they can’t all be continuing a Camino hike somewhere? Who knows?

Anyway, we had what is likely to be a typical breakfast for our time here, based around fruit and yoghurt with whatever extras that we fancied from the buffet, and then departed starting our Day 1 trek at around 0830 under clear skies.

We had sunshine for about the first 90 minutes, and passed some nice scenes, such as this old mill by, unsurprisingly, a stream

on sun-dappled pathways.

At the top of a gentle climb, we caught our last glimpse of Santiago

(until, that is, we catch sight of it on our way back from the coast in a couple of weeks). The sun continued to shine on the attractive Galician countryside

but it was becoming clear that clouds were gathering and before long

it started raining, occasionally quite hard.  What we really needed at this point was, of course, a café, and we’d actually formulated a plan for a coffee stop around this point. This meant that we only had to withstand about half an hour of the rain before we could take shelter and sustenance. (Actually, we were quite fortunate for the whole of the day, in that our planned coffee stops matched quite well with periods of rain, so we managed to avoid getting too badly soaked.)

This first stop involved, as it turned out, a couple of coffees as we waited a while for the rain to pass. But pass it did, and we carried on past some more attractive countryside.

Horreos – originally grain stores – are a common feature of the Galician scenery, and thus normally unremarkable. This one, though, was unusual,

in that it was a double-decker, something we’d not seen before.  Close examination of that photo will reveal that the sunshine had been replaced by dark clouds and, inevitably, the rains came again.  We were pleased, therefore, to be near our next planned café stop to wait out the rain, in Augapesado.  Emerging eventually from there took us past an ancient Roman bridge,

which was interesting to look at, as you could see the details of its construction clearly; but it had somewhat the look of a bridge to nowhere about it.

There was another imperative at work in our visit to the café; we wanted to rest before The Steep Bit which seems to be an unavoidable part of day one of your standard multi-day hike.  This, as far as we could glean from maps and other data sources, wasn’t anything like the brutal day one of the Camino Francés, whose first 8km were up a really stiff gradient; but it was a couple of kilometres up a reasonable incline.

I had got my walking poles out by this stage, and was very glad to have the use of them; Jane was more macho (macha?) about the whole thing and took the slope on unaided; and I’m glad to be able to report that neither of us found it to be that tough. Indeed, my Garmin activity monitor only allowed me three minutes of “vigorous” activity during the half-hour it took us to walk a couple of kilometres and climb the 230m vertical.  It’s nice to know that the bout of flu which had laid us low for about a month before we set out on this trip hadn’t dented our overall fitness too badly.

Because we’d waited for the rains to pass before we started the climb, we completed it in decent weather, which while great, didn’t last much beyond the top of it.

and once again we took refuge in our next planned stop, a café in Trasmonte, whilst the next pulse of rains came through. The stop wasn’t just about the rain, though; there was also an element of celebration of completion of the climb.

Just before we did so, though, we passed the very quaint parish church of Santa María.

It is entirely surrounded by a cemetery

and has a distinctive baroque tower.

From Trasmonte it was only a couple of kilometres, in gathering sunshine, to what was the high point of the day, emotionally if not topologically: having sunshine as we walked through Ponte Maceira.

I’m sure the name will be familiar to you, the dedicated reader of these pages. But just in case you were distracted at the time, let me refresh your memory.  We had visited Ponte Maceira once before, as part of the coach trip we took from Santiago to Finisterre after we completed our previous Camino; and while the weather generally that day was lovely, for our visit to Ponte Maceira it was not.

Today, though, our visit coincided wonderfully with sunshine.

(You’ll notice that the rapids were much more rapid today than last September; then I was even able to walk across part of the waterfall, something I would not have tried today!)

It looked lovely today.

and it was excellent being able to wander round this most photogenic hamlet and get some great scenes.

To the left in the picture above are a couple of mill buildings, and it’s possible to look inside them,

and doing so gives a good idea of the power of the river rushing through below.

The (reconstructed) bridge has an unusual feature on its arches.

I’ve not seen that style of construction anywhere else that I remember.

As we left Ponte Maceira the rain started again (hah!) but its heart wasn’t really in it, and we completed the remaining four kilometres or so to Negreira, our destination for the day, without further incident.

We fell a little foul of the Spanish dietary circadian rhythms, as we arrived just as all the restaurants were closing after lunch.  We had to make do with cheese and ham baguettes in the bar of our hotel, the hostal La Mezquita. But the room is comfortable  and the bar serves gin, so we’ll be OK.

Today, we’ve been astonishingly lucky in that our planned coffee stops largely coincided with rain showers. Tomorrow, however, may be a different story.  The Accuweather forecast for today was alternating cloudy intervals and showers, and it was about right.  Tomorrow, as we depart from Negreira, the forecast simply says “rain”.  As we approach our destination, Mazaricos, there’s a Yellow Warning for rain. So the day looks set to start out wet and turn torrential, which is not an alluring prospect.  It’ll maybe give me an opportunity for me to grumble about it and you to laugh at our discomfiture, so tune in soon and find out how bad it was.