Tag Archives: Scenery

Camino Finisterre, Day 8: Lires to Muxía – Mainly Jane Again In Spain

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Thursday 9 May 2024 – I was feeling better than yesterday, but discretion, valour, you know?  So once again we formulated a plan whereby Jane would do the hard yards on foot while I would do the easy kilometres in a taxi.  The weather prospects for the day

seemed similar to yesterday’s, which made a prompt start desirable (for her, at any rate), and so she departed at about 8.30am, leaving me to skulk first in my room and then in the hotel bar, which, for some reason, features a counterintuitively massive meat fridge.

I skulked until it was time to catch a taxi (and, it must be said, see what fallout there might be from eating moderately for breakfast, something of a novelty for the last days. Spoiler alert: no fallout; phew!). As yesterday, I have nothing to add about the journey, so here’s Jane….

It was much cooler and lightly overcast when I started out, leaving Lires and heading off on woodland and farmland paths of varyingly good going…

There were some striking sights along the way

and much evidence of spring planting and preparation.

I walked for a while behind this interesting variation on a horse-drawn carriage…

I wondered if the farmer was taking her to be shod, as she didn’t appear to have shoes and he was positioning the tractor very carefully as he drove so that she could walk where possible on the grassy verge, and avoid areas of broken road surface. [Not shoddy treatment, then – Ed (temporary)]

The way was unremarkable in many ways, although there were some great photo opportunities…

until the steepish bit up to the high point of the walk on Monte Lourido.

What goes up must come down, and the views opened up all around as the way descended (with what appeared to be a forest fire in the distance).

There were abrupt changes in the quality of the surface –

not so much of a problem for me on foot, but a bit of a sharp intake of breath for these Italian bicigrinos!

At a spring on the outskirts of Muxía this chap was doing his keep fit exercises, before filling his water bottle and passing me on his way back into town.

The descent into the town skirts the beautiful Praia de Lourido, with the less then beautiful (IMHO) Costa da Morte Parador on the slopes above.

The town is not particularly noteworthy, although there are some interesting murals

and the harbour area is quite picturesque.

I reached our hotel before Steve wafted in, so was able to check in and await his arrival.

Ah – here he is now!

The taxi ride passed without incident, except the one which happened before it started.  At 1235, I asked the nice lady behind reception at the hotel to request a taxi to take me to Muxía, and she told me it would be there in 20 minutes.  Accordingly, at 1255, I was sitting outside the hotel, ready to depart, and a taxi rolled up.  He looked grumpy when I approached and said, in my best Englishman-abroad-attempt-at-communicating-with-the-locals, “Muxía?”  I was disconcerted when he simply replied “no” and walked off into the hotel.  I thought at first he was going to, as it were, pick me up inside the hotel, but actually he’d just rocked up for a coffee. I sat back down, somewhat disconsolately, wondering if there’d been a cock-up, when another taxi turned up, and it turned out to be mine. The journey proceeded at Spanish taxi pace, i.e. slightly faster than is (a) legal or (b) comfortable.

Once we were both safely ensconced at the Hotel a de loló, we could relax for a while before going out for lunch.  For a change, there was no worry about finding a meal, as María, on the front desk, had pointed us at a restaurant, A Marina, whose kitchen was open all day.  The room was one of those excellent, well-organised hotel rooms which are not expansive, but which are beautifully designed to have all that’s reasonably needed, all reasonably within reach.  That included a kettle! We were thus able to treat ourselves to a Nice Cup Of Tea. When we were in Finisterre, Jane had spotted some local Earl Grey,

so, in order to conserve our precious stocks of Twining’s finest, we tested out this “precious black tea” and found it to be satisfactorily restorative, giving us the energy to go to lunch. Then we went for a walk. Obviously. (It’s so nice to be able to type that, as today is the first day I’ve felt capable of walking with any degree of pleasure, dignity or pace since Monday.)

Lunch was also an opportunity to reintroduce my digestive system to proper food (OK, and gin), in an experiment which – so far, writing some hours later – seems to have been a success, or at least not a noisome failure.  Before we embarked on the walk, we picked up our Compostelae Muxiannae, our certificates for completing what, in our case, is Phase II of III.  And I suppose it’s somewhat cheating for me to claim a Compostela, since I didn’t actually walk the whole way.  So sue me.

Our objective for the walk was to go to the “0 km” post which marks the Muxía end of the Camino, by the sanctuary dedicated to the virgin.  As with Finisterre, we visited last Autumn, but by bus.  The site is quite impressive, as you’ll have noticed from the video I shot last year.

Last year we had approached the site from the coach park, which, obvs, is designed to show the whole area to its best advantage, and I was very taken with the charisma of the place, and left with the impression that it was somehow on a remote promontory.  This year, though, we just walked 10 minutes up the road from the town, and discovered that it isn’t.

You just walk up the road and there you are.  It’s still a lovely site, though.

On the way there we passed the Igrexa de Santa María de Muxía, which is the site of a yearly pilgrimage every September,

and, rather less spiritually, drying rails for conger eels,

which are arranged in a square, rather than the conger line I’d expect.

We spent a few minutes at the site reacquainting ourselves with its Camino-related aspects, but particularly, of course, the “0 km” marker, to show we’d completed this stage.

There are other decent views across the site, too,

including the “sail rock”, which was part of the stone boat supposedly sailed there by the virgin Mary to reassure St. James that his work was successfully completed.  The Camino is full of symbolics like this.

We walked back into town round the other side of the headland, past dry stone walling which we at first thought might have been the remains of ancient habitations

but, it soon turned out, were simply allotments.

One final conger eel rack

and we were back at the hotel, getting ourselves outside more of Sir Winston’s finest.

The morrow?  Too soon to be certain, but the omens are favourable; tonight will be the acid test, possibly in a literal manner, as to whether my digestion really was ready for that meal.  If it turns out that it was, I think I might be ready to rejoin Jane on the road as we walk the 10km or so to Quintáns. If she’ll have me, that is. It’s a short walk and, one hopes, not too arduous. The current forecast for the weather is (whisper it) good, with cooler temperatures but no rain. So, stay tuned and see how the day unfolds, OK?

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.