2023 WynChar Camino

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.

For Christy and Rebecca: we were walking through Ferrell and the treat guy came along with his dog. Dogs act the same everywhere.

We have referred to the Camino forum here. If you are at all interested in knowing more about the Camino, it is the place to look. There are discussions on a wide range of topics by a lot of people even more fanatical about the Camino that we are. They discuss all of the dozens of Caminos and pilgrimages in Spain as well as ones in France, Italy, England, Japan, etc. You can join for a small fee and avoid the ads. Or you can read for free if you don’t mind the ads.

It is run by a Norwegian named Ivar who lives in Santiago. Google “ivar camino forum” to find it.

Post by Wynette: When we talk about prices here, we’ve been talking about Euros. I just checked and today a Euro is $1.11. Up a penny or two since we got here.

The thing about prices here is that when a price is quoted it includes all taxes, service charges, etc. So, an 80 euro hotel room costs us exactly 80 euros. And in the case of our hotel tonight, that also includes breakfast tomorrow morning.

In restaurants, again, quoted prices also include tax. And no one expects you to tip, although we often leave a little bit on the table.

So, even though Euros cost more than dollars, it always ends up seeming about the same as the US because of no added taxes and tips.

Post by Wynette:

We spent last night in O Porto de Espasante. We stayed there two nights in 2019 and fell in love with the town. The son in the family who own the hotel where we stayed (Las Palomas) told us that “everyone always comes back to Espasante.” He spoke excellent English and we enjoyed talking with him this morning at breakfast. He told us that only about 50 people live in Porto de Espasante permanently but in the summer it is mobbed. Many people from Madrid, etc. own apartments there and live there in the summer to get away from the heat. He said right now they have only 3 people working at the hotel (him, his mother, and one other person). He said in the summer they employ 15 people. He said one day, he walked 22 km (13 miles) just inside his restaurant serving people. (He tracked it with his phone.)

We had lunch at Os Vellos bar where we spent a lot of time at in 2019. What a pleasure to return. We ordered a cabbage soup and steamed mussels and pork ribs and were about to order something else when the server stopped us and said “don’t order anything else or you’ll have too much food.” Good thing we did. The servings were huge. Everything we ordered was more than enough for 2 people. We were expecting one person servings.

As we were walking out of town this morning, we saw about 20 memorials like those pictured below. Those weren’t there in 2019 so we think they are probably people in the village who died from covid. Spain was hit hard by the pandemic.

I stopped here where Wynette is standing because I saw three different colors of flowers.

Then I noticed another colored object. Wow, wild strawberries! We each enjoyed 4-5 of them. This area must get more sun or something because we kept looking and didn’t find any more.

Okay, I admit it, I go on and on about the bars. Walking into Ortigueira today we were tired and stopped at the first bar we saw for a coffee.

We were greeted by a hearty “Digame” (“talk to me” — more commonly said in answering the phone) from the friendly barkeep seen clearing our cups in this photo. There were women at the bar, as you can see, and a few couples like us.

We got cafe con leche in a glass this time, it varies. They also brought us some little cakes. We didn’t order them but always fun to get. Later he brought us some ham croquettes.

The decor in every bar is different. Notice the baseball bat on the wall.

It seemed to be just a little bar but notice the “comedor” sign. That leads to a dining room in the back. Often they are quite spacious.

While we were there the bread delivery woman came in with some bread for the comedor. It looked so good that a guy sitting at the bar wanted to get one and she went out to the truck and got one for him.

We passed 4-5 more bars in the next six blocks to our hotel.