Tag Archives: Scenery

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 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 1: It Begins: Santiago to Negreira

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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.