Days 5 & 6
We were up at six, aiming to be on the road by eight. It was still middle-of-the-night dark.
We dressed, made tea and sat beneath a sky scattered with familiar constellations while the campsite around us slept on. By the time we were ready to leave, other campers began to stir and the sun had only just begun to poke over the horizon.
Although it hadn’t rained, our camping equipment was soaked. In fact, it was wetter than it had been after some of the nights when we’d been camping through torrential rain.
I found this extremely curious.
We left the beach behind and travelled for about forty-five minutes before picking up a mountain track at Carabanzo. Getting to the track was an adventure in itself. The route squeezed through some extremely tight spaces in the village, including one section where we had to squeeze past a red house with a red car. Between us, this would become one of those memories that needs no further explanation. Mention ‘the red house with the red car’ and I’m sure we’d all tense up. It was that tight.
Once through, though, we were rewarded with beautiful, bumpy terrain and another taste of what we’d come for. Spectacular scenery with hazy mountains that stretched on as far as the eye could see.
After the tracks, we spent around four and a half hours on the road towards our next hotel in Dumbría.
Along the way, every so often a tall oblong concrete structure would appear beside the road filled with what looked like gravestones. After a quick online search, I discovered these were burial niches, known as nichos in Spain. There was something strangely compelling about seeing these repositories of the dead scattered through the countryside.
We also noticed some other structures next to houses: slabs of stone raised on mushroom-shaped stilts. They looked quirky and strangely funerary. Another online search identified them as Galician hórreos, traditionally used for storing harvested crops.
Eventually we arrived at our hotel in Dumbría. It sat in the middle of what appeared to be an uninspiring concrete village, all hard edges, lines and little kerb appeal. Glaringly bright in the late evening sun. However, as if to add character, strangely beautiful cats lounged around outside, bewitching us with muted purrs and turquoise eyes.
More familiars?
Inside the hotel was a completely different story. Carefully chosen furniture and natural stone gave the interior a warmth that the outside façade had completely failed to convey, and a sprawling green garden out the back was edged by a babbling river. No concrete in sight. Nor cats.
The owners didn’t speak much English, and our Spanish was bare minimum. But we all got by with Google Translate, hand gestures and facial expressions. What more do you need?
The following morning, after breakfast, the owners sent us on our way with wedges of homemade cake. I’m not sure there’s a better way to leave a hotel, if I’m honest.
We headed back out onto the tracks, stopping to take in the stunning Atlantic coastline at Vimianzo, before climbing higher into the mountains, where enormous wind turbines stood along the ridgelines. Eventually, we made our way towards our next campsite near Pontevedra, where we’d spend the night almost on the beach.
The area is popular with pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago, and in places a yellow track runs alongside the road, guiding them along the route. It reminded me of the Yellow Brick Road. I desperately wanted to see someone doing the walk wearing ruby slippers. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t.
Although I wasn’t walking to Santiago, it made me ponder that we all have our reasons for setting out. Some journeys are made to reach somewhere, whereas others are made because we need to leave where we were. I found myself wondering whether this journey I was on was becoming a kind of pilgrimage of its own. Not towards a holy place, just towards some space to think. To reflect. To be.
That evening, we took another track up into the mountains, stopping at the top to look out across the sea and eat our dinner. Below us the coastline stretched into the distance and, as the sun began to set, a lighthouse began to blink. Sitting above wispy clouds, there was a feeling we’d arrived somewhere slightly beyond the ordinary. And perhaps that’s where the veil becomes thinnest. Not in the darkness, but in the quiet moments when we stop trying to get somewhere and simply look.
