Advertisement
Published: June 10th 2018
Edit Blog Post
As Peter, Paul and Mary once sang, when '
they were leaving on a jet plane': All my bags are packed I'm ready to go! And so they are! The grass is cut, my luggage is indeed packed and......I've done all the jobs Mandy had asked me to do (I think!!). Steve Forbes is driving down from Lymm to pick me up and drive us both to Gatwick. He arrives bang on 1pm as planned and after a light lunch, kissing Mandy goodbye, we are on our way. And we hadn't gone more than a few miles before we hit our first snag - the road between Leighton Buzzard and Tring was closed (goodness knows why!), but a quick detour through Cheddington and we were back on track. The M25 is the usual slog, but we still arrive at the parking site only 10 minutes after our scheduled arrival time of 4.30.
A quick transfer to the airport, check in at the hotel, dump the bags in the room, then it was off to the bar! Marie Blakeley joined us shortly after and we had a G&T waiting for her ( Steve and I were on draft San
Miguel - we WERE off to Spain, after all!). Tim Horan and Jim Chivers arrived shortly after and with Tina Filby expecting to join us nearer 9pm, the five of us went off to test the delights of the Premier Inn restaurant - not bad, as it happens. Tina arrived as planned, but wasn't eating, so with us needing to get to check in by 4am, it was off to bed for an early night!
The next morning was upon us far too soon, but the alarm clocks all worked and we met up as planned in the hotel lobby at 3.50am (!!!), before walking over the road to the terminal and Easyjet's automated check in, which surprisely went without a hitch. In no time, we were going through Security and guess what.......I was the only one to have his bag checked! But.......I blame Mandy for not being with me!! It seems I had forgotten to put my liquids and 'ointments' into a plastic bag; I explained to the lady who was checking the bag that my wife normally makes sure I do this properly and with a weary shake of the head and knowing smile, she simply said
how she was surprised that I was let out alone!! Bloody cheek, I say.....but as it turns out, there was no explosive in my liquids; she waved me off and we were soon on our way!
Garfunkels for brekkie, although it was expensive and pretty poor AND Marie left her cardie behind! Then, it was off to the gate and on to the plane without drama, where we had the whole of row 15 to the six of us - brilliant! The plane taxis out and after staying put for a while on the taxiway (by which time I was asleep!), the Captain comes over the tannoy and announces that there was a slight technical fault with the automated landing system (or something like that!) and as the weather in Santiago was 'marginal' (what the hell is 'marginal'weather? Does it mean that there nearly was some weather???), he told us that we would need to return to the stand, for an engineer to check it out. Joy of joys, this sounded ominous. Our plans could be well and truly scuppered if the flight had to be cancelled. But no, the engineer came up trumps and about 90 minutes behind
schedule we were on our way.......phew! Incidentally, this might be a good time to mention the weather forecast for our trip. We are doing this walk about six weeks later than normal and on mainland Spain of course, so......this could be hot!! But no, the weather forecast is pretty foul, particularly for the first few days - good job I threw my waterproof trousers in at the last minute!
The flight itself was uneventful and some of us took the opportunity to close our eyes, relax and contemplate the epic walk ahead of us......as the picture will testify! On arrival, we could see that Santiago is a modern airport and a reasonable size, but with only three planes parked up (including us), it was hardly busy, so it wasn't long before we met up with our driver and were on our way to Ferrol. The drive took about an hour and we pulled up at our hotel, El Suizo, around midday. A nice little place, with comfortable rooms, which were ready and waiting for us. The receptionist spoke perfect English and gave us some good advice on what to see in Ferrol. The truth is, there really isn't that
much. Ferrol is an industrial town and military base, with particular emphasis on shipbuilding and I'm not sure that it sees a great deal of tourism, other than from the 'Camino' of course.
We decided to stroll down to the port and check out the tourism office, which was also the start point of the Camino; it was closed! We had forgotten about siesta time, So, we walked back towards the hotel and stopped for a late lunch at the Bla Bla restaurant, where we had a cracking bocadillo each (massive size and great bread), together with a large beer each for a total of less than €50. It was then back to the hotel to catch up on some zzzzz's before we popped down to the tourist office again at 5.30, before it closed at six. We wanted to get there to obtain the first stamps in our Pilgrim's Passport and this we duly did. The lady in the office was very helpful and she gave us some very useful information to help us get out of the town on the correct path tomorrow.
Unfortunately, while we were in the tourist office it started raining and as
we left, it was bucketing down. We waited a while and although it eased up enough to let us leave, by the time we reached the hotel we were drenched. We decided to have a drink in the hotel bar, but no.........it was closed tonight!!! So instead, we popped to the supermarket over the road to pick up some wine and nibbles. We all congregated in the biggest room (which happened to be that of Steve and I) and had a sumptuous meal of bread rolls with ham and cheese, crisps (Lays of course!), cashew nuts, grapes and Cadbury's Buttons, washed down with two 'cheap' bottles of wine, one red one white. I say cheap............well they would have been if Steve hadn't misread the 'offer' and instead of €10 for the two, they turned out costing us nearer €25; but so what, they did taste pretty good.
Meal over, we retired to bed, leaving Steve and I to clear up the dinner things and tidy up the room - just typical of some house guests; never help clear up, ha ha!!! The weather forecast is not looking good tomorrow, so we could be getting wet........deep joy!!
Buen Camino!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.138s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 36; dbt: 0.0706s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Bob Andrews
non-member comment
You should have been a Simon Calder of this world,!!!!
Have you got verbal diarrhoea.?