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Published: July 20th 2014
Galicia certainly hasn’t disappointed. I am a little in love with it.. Lovely people, great food at good prices. Barely anyone speaks English as it’s not really on the non-Spanish tourist trail. My schoolgirl Spanish has really helped, though sometimes with hilarious consequences! (More later on this..) I have also finally made it to Santiago De Compostela after reading several books about it – It didn’t disappoint.
Things on board are definitely getting slick and second nature for the crew. We’re finding our sea legs. Alcohol consumption and cooking experimentation has increased three fold!
Hair also getting bleached, so the grey hairs aren’t showing quite as much – though desperate to get my hair dyed once I work out how to say it in Portuguese?!?
Oh, and did I mention the tan – coming on nicely thanks – I may need to buy a white bikini soon!
Sun 6th July – Thu 10th July – Based in Coruna with trip to Santiago De Compostela We have spent 5 nights in Marina Coruna. Partly because we needed to replace our anchor and also because we are having an overnight trip to Santiago De
Compostela – the last stop on the ancient Camino pilgrimage route from St Jean in France – 500 miles done mainly on foot, though some cycle or ride horses. Those who complete the pilgrimage erase all their sins or something like that…
Managed to find a decent chandlery near the port to replace the anchor.. Luckily they spoke excellent English and managed to find the exact anchor we had lost, even though it isn’t very common in Spain. As is our luck, the anchor is made in New Zealand, so we ended up paying a hefty amount in duty – the guy in the chandlery says it’s the most expensive anchor he has ever sold! £450 later we leave the shop to await its delivery. Meanwhile there is plenty to occupy us in La Coruna.
The marina is fab – but the wifi is not, so annoyingly it’s a very slow and frustrating to do all the e-mail catching up we need to do. Often meaning we end up in a café with wifi instead. But the laundry & hot showers are much appreciated.
Day one and Mike takes me on a tour of the
city – just a few wrong turns, but we get a real feel for the old town. As you would expect, plenty of beautiful churches and squares. Mike has his first empanada (A kind of flat Spanish pasty). We snack around the various bakeries which seem to litter Galicia – super cheap and open until 10:30pm!! We head for the city beach and find an awesome restaurant where we get the tapas 5euro menu – 2x tapas, glass of Rioja & a coffee. We can’t believe our luck – it’s really nice, filling and equal to what we paid for a beer in France!
The next day we decide to do a few attractions and walk to the Torre De Hercules – an old ROMAN lighthouse. Can’t believe they had lighthouses back then! In the evening we have some sangria (1.75EUR for a large bottle) and plan the next few weeks of our trip. You’ll have to see the photos of Mike giving his demonstration of the route to Rich & Rach!
On Wednesday we jump on the very efficient Renfe train to Santiago De Compostela – 45mins in an air-conditioned train. On arrival the new
part of the city doesn’t seem much to write home about. I had been bigging up stories about the Pilgrims Way to everyone, so was really hoping that it would meet my expectations and feel like a special place.
As soon as we started walking into the old town the atmosphere changed. It didn’t feel like your standard tourist trap. Everything seemed really authentic and well thought out. Almost immediately you notice pilgrims around you, marked out by their slightly grubby appearance, the pilgrims symbol of the scallop shell and also walking sticks. They also have leathery tans.
Quite by accident we picked a place opposite the Pilgrims office for a late breakfast – Chocolate con Churros (See photo – LUSH). A queue began to form as pilgrims started to arrive with their stamped pilgrim passports, so they could claim their ‘compostela’ certificate to prove their pilgrimage. We could hear loads of different languages being spoken around us and people singing and jumping up and down – very grateful to have made it through the 500 miles. Some were limping and heavily bandaged. We spent the rest of the day following another ‘Walker special tour’ of the old
city. The photos speak for themselves – there were a lot of churches, convents & monasteries. A lot of them still containing priceless alters and objects. The Santiago De Compostela cathedral didn’t disappoint. Even if the ‘supposed’ remains of St James does sound a bit unlikely, the place was really impressive. It’s the third most holy site in Christianity after Rome & Jerusalem. You could confess in one of the many confession boxes in almost any European language as well as hear mass in many languages too. Despite what you may or may not believe, the place had a special feel to it.
We spent the rest of the afternoon trying out some more tapas around town. Padron de Pimento is a real delicacy here – small green peppers cooked in olive oil & salt & pepper – delicious. Then we have a 2euro glass of freezing white wine, with free Spanish Omelette in a lovely café down one of the many lanes. Then we pop into a local deli for some cake to eat when we reach the top of the hill of big park with great view looking back on the cathedral. Tarte de Santiago
is a rich almondy tart, covered in icing sugar, with shape of cross on top. Very nice flavour, not as sickly as it sounds. On the way back to the hotel we walk through the infamous Dakar street where the truly brave are challenged to drink 48 drinks in different bars before midnight. We fail with not one drop crossing our lips, but the people watching is great – the restaurants windows are full of their wares – Octopus, huge piece of meat & every kind of shellfish going. Fried octopus or ‘Pulpo’ is big here!
What’s a girl to do after a day’s semi-pilgrimage – but go and find herself one of the mythical grill restaurants. We keep hearing that Galician food is influenced by Argentina as a lot of Galician’s left to go and find work there – bringing back a love of grilled pork & veal. We had heard no visit to Galicia was complete without checking out one of the places – but they are a little off the tourist grid. We got a tip off from the receptionist at our hotel and armed with my pathetic Spanish we headed out on our
own special meat pilgrimage. A few wrong turns and we know we are in the right place. We enter a dimly lit restaurant, where the kitchen is in plain sight – a massive grill, operated by a little Spanish guy with muscly tanned arms. There is a pile of sausage on the counter – we’ve made it! The menu is small, incomprehensible. A lot of hand gestures later we order some meat & wine. Small ceramic cups are handed over, we assume correctly these are wine ‘glasses’, phew! Next what seems like an entire pig is loaded onto the grill, along with more sausage than a girl could enjoy in a lifetime. Even Mike looks scared! “Ha!” I say – “it can’t all be for us can it?”
The mother of all meat piles is loaded onto the table in front of us. We keep going… Rich is drafted in – we need him, vegetarian or no vegetarian, we can’t leave this huge pile of meat uneaten!!
Two hours later we depart the restaurant – valuable lessons learned about Galician
sharing dishes, bellies bursting, doggy bags in hand.
We wake up to a fab breakfast
at the Hotel Moure (Booked via booking.com & designed by Philip Stark, all this for £60 a night). Fresh orange Juice, pastries, cake, cheese and door step toast. Followed up by bottomless coffee. Well-fed and after limitless free hot water we head back into the old town (5min walk) to go and see some more sights. Rach & I are already thinking we could have spent more than a few days here. We pop into the St Martin church (Also an old monastery). It’s now become a museum, giving an insight into the lives of the monks. Well worth the 2.5EUR entrance fee. The boys wait for us patiently outside. Then we just have time for a little bit of shopping before jumping on a train back to La Coruna. We then spend the evening prepping the boat for tomorrows sail.
Friday 11th July – Rachel’s birthday (Camarin᷉as) We are now sailing towards our next goal of Isla Cies. We have two stops on the way. So we have a bit of a long sail today – 8hrs. Well actually we thought it would take much longer, but the winds really picked up and we have
occasional force 6 winds, fortunately in the right direction to make the sail comfortable, but quick. We have decided to pull into Camarina for the night. We can anchor in quite a sheltered bay and then motor into the town via dinghy for Rach’s birthday night out. On arrival it’s still quite windy on the anchorage, the new anchor gets its first use. Unfortunately the sea bed is covered in thick kelp and we have 3 goes before the anchor gets properly set. The first time we are all below decks sorting out the boat when we start to realise all I not well. When Mike & Rach pop their heads out the hatch we have dragged quite a way. We have a tracking function on the iPad which shows just how far we have dragged!!! Mike takes great delight in watching all the other boats at follow us in trying to anchor too!
Rich is in charge of Rach’s birthday dinner – curried rice & pees, followed by a Victoria sponge cake. We are all a bit nervous about leaving the boat anchored, but it hasn’t moved for a few good hours. We head ashore in the dinghy
to check out Camarinas’s guide book couldn’t have been more wrong! Firstly we just happened to have arrived while there is a medieval fayre in town. There are about 30 stalls of tat, all made to look ‘ye olde worlde’ by adding the word ‘artesana’ to the sign. You can also try your hand at jousting, crossbows & archery. You can also try out various medieval weapons on a stall that would have been immediately shut down in the UK – little boys with eyes like saucers walk past dreaming there pocket money could stretch to a wooden club with iron nails coming out of the top! We find a bar for some drinks, but the town is far from what the guidebook promised. Around 11pm, we head back to the boat after watching some violent flag fighting – hoping the dinghy hasn’t been snaffled by any of the medieval gypsys.
Distance travelled: 48nm (8hrs)
Saturday 12th July – Muros Slightly suspiciously after last night’s fail, we set off for the little fishing port of Muros. Expectations low. We have a really nice sail. Winds are keeping us on a nice broad reach, fast, but
not too fast. The boat is sitting pretty upright. Muros is in the mouth of an estuary, which is a like a nice big lake. We race another couple of boats in for fun (Though not sure they knew we were racing them!!!)
We arrive in Muros around 6pm, all looking forward to the cheap pizza place that is promised in the guide book. The almanac says there is lots of kelp on the seabed again. But we are prepared this time and get the anchor down 3
rd try. As soon as the tracker shows we aren’t moving we head into the town. Much prettier than Camarinas and it has a real buzz about it. Massively over order again – still not got our heads around the Galician sharing thing.
Distance travelled: 38nm (8hrs)
Sunday 13th July – Senxenxo Beach Today we were supposed to be heading for the old Galician town of Pontevedra, but at the last minute we decide on the beach option instead. Senxenxo is your typical Spanish Beach resort, but it’s been a while since we have been to any nice beaches as we have tended to anchor in fishing
harbours. He lure of a nice sandy cove and anchorage is too much, not to mention 2hrs less sailing to get into the river at Pontevedra. So at a very civilised 2:30pm we drop the anchor first time an more off the beach looking like total yuppy - wifi (Pronounced ‘weefee’ in Spain) & ice-cream ahoy! I manage an afternoon swim despite the temperature being 14degrees.
Distance travelled: 38nm (6hrs)
Monday 14th – Thu 17th July – Isla Cies (Islas Atlanticos) After a mammoth shopping trip we have set off for the Isla Cies. It’s just a lively 10nm sail from Senxenxo. We had to apply for both a navigation license (Done by fax) and anchoring permission (Online) to be able to stay here as it is a nature reserve / bird sanctuary. The sea immediately turns a turquoise blue colour. We moor off one of the smaller beaches you are allowed to anchor from as it is protected from the wind. (Though we don’t actually end up moving to the main beach at all) Isla Cies is made up of three islands. One is an uninhabited bird sanctuary, the other two have a
campsite and are joined by a lagoon in the middle.
We are immediately thrilled to be here. It feels like a little slice of paradise, despite the fact you can see the large port of Vigo across from us and ferries drop off and pick up tourists all day.
Everything is white sand, crystal clear waters and pine tree lined hills.
We all start to unwind and enjoy three days in one place. We have a very chilled three days including Rich’s birthday celebrations which include a boat BBQ of ribs, prawns & sausages (Nothing veggie about that!!) & a lovely banana cake! All washed down with copious amounts of sangria.
We have great weather until the last day, when we wake up to a thick sea mist covering most of the island, blow in straight from the Atlantic. It’s eerie and beautiful all at the same time. (The pics show it really well). The mist moves around, so one minute you can’t see the end of the boat, but the next minute it’s moved past and you can see again!
I would highly recommend visiting these gorgeous islands if you get the chance. Try
and stay the night too. Hardly any non-Spanish tourists.
So now it’s off to Portugal for us. We can’t speak a word of Portuguese so this could be interesting. First Stop is Porto & our chance to do some Port tasting..
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Rod & Janet
non-member comment
Paradise indeed!
Looks a fabulous area - what a meat feast!