Ruta del Cantábrico, Camino do Mar, Camino Inglés
Percebes are a shellfish that is common in this part of Galicia. Several guidebooks mentioned that you should try them. But they grow on rock faces in the tidal zone and are difficult to harvest and hence expensive. I saw them on the menu and decided to try them. The server had to give us a lesson in how to eat them. Here is a video of my version of what she taught us: https://photos.app.goo.gl/U2pv1zfLYSyRaBKv8
The santuario is the end of a 30 mile pilgrimage starting in or around Ferrol.
When we were planning our trip in 2019 we wanted to stay in Texeido but there was no place within 8-10 miles of it. Since then someone built a very nice, modern casa rural a few hundred feet and around the bend from the town, by the tour bus parking lot.
The place was very modern. We liked it a lot. One modern thing was they had radiant heat in the floors. I have always wanted to have radiant heat but it is expensive to retrofit. Turned out it was kind of an issue when we arrived (quite early 10 am). The owner just gave us a entry code and we had the place to ourselves. The heat was set to 19C and we turned it up to 22C but nothing happened for the next hour. I looked around and saw there were no air vents and realized it must be radiant heat. Radiant heat moves slowly, it took 10 hours for the heat to read 22C. And it was too warm overnight. So radiant heat is great but maybe not the best for a hotel.
The setting is beautiful. You can’t really go too far, what with the steep cliffs and all, but we walked where we could.
There is a tiny town around the Sanctuario, maybe 10 buildings. I don’t suppose more than 10-20 people live there. The buildings all (well almost all) have the same whitewashed stone walls. There are four places to eat and 3-4 souvenir shops. We bought a refrigerator magnet.
We pretty much had the place to ourselves. There was only one other couple walking around. Until after lunch, then…
Wynette thought that this was where people went to pray for a miracle. It reminded her of Chimayo in northern New Mexico.
To us this seemed similar to churches in New Mexico. It is from the 16th century so the timing is right.
Post by Wynette: We are on the Camino! We finished the Ruta Cantabrica about five days ago and had planned to walk beyond the Ruta, heading west, staying along the Atlantic Ocean. Lots of charming towns and beautiful coastline to explore. However, we discovered that there are not good trails for walking that part of Spain — unless you want to do some very rugged hiking. So, we were finding ourselves walking on highways. Not huge highways. Highways where a car would pass every minute or two. When there isn’t a good shoulder, that kind of walking can be tiring. You have to be on the alert all the time and also the sound of the cars gets to you. We quickly realized we didn’t want to continue doing that. So, we took a taxi to our destinations for the last two nights. (Our first taxi driver told us that it would be dangerous to walk the road he was taking us on, and the road we had earlier planned to walk.) We stayed in two lovely places and will in future posts talk about one of them in depth.
We thought we would try to do some more walking in that area but then decided “heck, let’s just start the Camino Ingles”. So this morning, we took a taxi and a bus to Ferrol where the Camino Ingles (aka “the English Camino”) begins. The bus let us off very close to the beginning of this Camino. It is the Camino the English people took historically to get to Santiago after taking an easy(?) boat ride over from England. It’s only about 110 km long (68 miles). We plan to go slow and do from 6 to 10 miles a day. We started with a bang and did 9.4 miles today. We started walking when the bus driver left us off about noon and didn’t stop once (except to run into the LIDL store for walnuts and muesli and fruit) until we got to a restaurant near our hotel for tonight.
We are very excited to be pilgrims again. To be on a walking path again. A path for walking!! A path with good markers, the lovely yellow arrows. A path that leads to Santiago.
And we are hoping we’ll have time for more blogging in the evenings now that we’ve figured out all these logistics!
On Monday April 24 we took a taxi to Texeido. The alternative was a eight mile hike up several thousand feet and back down, in the rain, on narrow mountain roads. The taxi ride was scary enough, these guys go fast even around the blind corners, and the roads are two way but only one car wide.
The Santuario de Santo Andre de Texeido is a famous shine in Galicia and is the end of a popular pilgrimage from Ferrol. It is set on the west coast of Galicia along seaside cliffs that are the highest in Europe. They were “only” about 200 feet at the town but about 15 km away they are over 600 feet. We didn’t feel up to doing that 18 mile round trip by foot. But hated not to get to see them.
We had heard of it but didn’t know much about it. We were delighted with what we found. We stayed at a new casa rural that was lovely and very modern. The Sanctuario was amazing. The little town around it was so cute. And the scenery was stunning. We’ll divide this into a few posts.