Una excurción a Combarro

Yesterday, while sitting in a bar here in Pontevedra taking a break during our self-guided walking tour of the city, a young man sitting near us asked if we were walking the Camino. Turned out he was originally from Minnesota, but living here with his wife and three children. We talked with him at least 30 minutes. We asked him what he’d suggest we see/do while we are here. He named a number of things and, among them was a nearby village named Combarro.

Then, later, we went to the grocery store and the very friendly person who checked us out who we had chatted with on an earlier day, asked us how long we were staying here. When she found out we had a few more days she advised (unsolicited), “Combarro, you have to go to Combarro.” The clerk in the next station nodded vigorously and said “Yes, Combarro.” So, we decided to go to Combarro today.

It’s a 15 minute bus ride to get there. While we were waiting at the bus stop I was chatting with the woman sitting next to us and told her we were going to Combarro. She gave us a thumbs up and said something like “good choice.”

So, we figured by then our expectations were way too high.

But we did like Combarro. A cute little fishing village, population 1300, mostly unspoiled by urbanization (as they call it here). It was a little spoiled by turismo (as they call it here) but not too bad. Some photos follow. I just realized we didn’t take any photos of the touristy part. There were probably a dozen little souvenir shops in the middle of our walk through the narrow path through the old part of town.

Strangely there were dozens and dozens of hórreos, aka granaries, which we’ve mentioned over and over in our blogs. We couldn’t figure out why a fishing village would need so many granaries.
There was an info sign about them (in Galician, Spanish, and English).
Granary by the little beach
More granaries and an old boat (it’s hard to get a photo without a granary in it)
Old fisherman’s homes
Nice little alley way, to get to a granary
A newer part of town
Still some fishing going on. These are traps for some kind of shell fish, probably.
Combarro is on a ria (we might call it a narrow bay), not directly on the Atlantic

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