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Published: April 25th 2013
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Last day in Castile Tuesday was a Fiesta Day in Castile y León (a Bank Holiday). We awoke to find several caravans arriving, some quite early and others throughout the morning, so we expected a noisy Fiesta night ahead. Wrong! By evening everyone had disappeared, leaving us completely alone, the only campers down in the woods by the lake. We like peace and quiet but I (Vivien) think a noisy Fiesta night might have been better than being completely alone in such an out-of-the-way place; John, however, was quite happy about it and it meant we could let the dogs off the leads for a run. Spanish campers had used the day to “set up” their caravan pitches for the summer ahead, for holidays and weekends. Others who had been here over the weekend also left today. One young couple who John helped placing his van on the next pitch to us said that he was putting it there until October.
We decided to go off for a picnic lunch. We drove to the “Casa del Parque” an impressive information centre where we spent a while learning about the flora and fauna of the region e.g. otters, martins, eagles,
buzzards and wolves. We have already seen quite a few golden eagles as well as black and white buzzards flying about. To see the wolves one needs to go higher up country on a guided tour “wolf watching”. There are still quite a few wolves in Northern Spain and also still a limited number of Brown Bears, in León and the Picos de Europa. We watched a film about this most endangered of species at the Casa del Parque. This surprised us. We knew there were wolves but thought that the bears had all been hunted out back in the 1930s when bear hunting was all the rage; not so. There are still some left. We were lucky to see Brown Bears in California in 2008. Who knows, maybe we shall see some when we get to the Picos in May!
After leaving the Casa del Parque we went for a five kilometre walk along the River Tera. This fast-flowing trout river provided us with a wonderful place to picnic and also where the dogs could run about on the lush green grass. They loved it! Apart from three fishermen, we had the river and woods to ourselves for
a few blissful sunny hours.
On our way back to the campsite we did a little detour to drive up to the Monasterio de San Martin, above the lake, perched on the mountainside at 1,200 metres altitude. Here we saw photographs of a terrible flood in 1959 when the Rio Tera flooded the valley and the little village of Ribadelargo (where we had lunch yesterday) killing 138 people, which at that time was half the population. Only 22 bodies were recovered. Most of the rest lost their homes, livestock and all possessions. One photo shows Franco visiting the survivors. He promised a meagre compensation of 25,000 pts ( 150 euros) per dead child, 80,000 pts (480 euros) for a woman and 95,000 pts (570 euros) for a man. Most families never received anything despite these promises! San Martin sits perched above our campsite and offers stunning panoramic views of the lake. This was another great day.
On Wednesday we set off to drive to Galicia, to get as far west as we can go, to Spain´s Atlantic coast. When we checked out of the campsite in Sanabria we had a pleasant surprise; the daily fee was only 14
euros not 16 euros, so we just paid 42 euros for our three night camp (including free WIFI in the bar). The journey to Galicia was scenic all the way. We left Sanabria at 11 a.m. and got to Muros, in A Coruña province, just south of Finisterre, at 4.15 p.m. The journey was 317 kilometres, mostly over high mountainous country, the mountainsides full of purple and white heather and yellow gorse. We should have picked some “lucky heather” and pretended to be real pikeys! Most of the passes were 1,500 metres or higher and the views were stunning.
Our campsite here in Galicia is called Camping A’Vouga and the cost is also just 14 euros per night (free WIFI and no charge for dogs). It is right beside the sea on a beautiful stretch of Atlantic coast. It is much warmer here than in the mountains so we ate on the campsite restaurant terrace, doggies slept under the table, beside the sea. We had huge entrecote steaks which were delicious, but as we watched the fishing fleet coming home to harbour in Muros we decided that we really should eat fish tomorrow. Galicia is famous for fish and
seafood. However, it is also renowned for its meat. We have friends who own a Gallego restaurant (Galician cuisine) near our home in the south and they get their meat sent down from Galicia! We shall be staying here at least a week. There is so much to see and it is our first trip to Galicia. Tomorrow, however, we plan to just chill out. Dogs are allowed on the beach here so we´ll all have a bit of a cold Atlantic paddle. Despite the warmer temperatures, the Atlantic is not the Med so we don´t expect to be swimming!
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