Day 8 - Is it a Dream?

I woke up at 3.55am to the sound of booming music coming in through our open window. Jackie informed me that she had been kept awake by the music since 2am. After 5 minutes of listening to it from my bed there was nothing for it but to get up and investigate.

I got dressed, put on my anorak because it was pouring with rain and headed out towards the source of the music. The large stage that was being erected earlier was now glowing in flashing lights & pounding with euro pop noise. The band consisted of 2 male vocalists, 2 female backing singer/dancers & an assortment of musicians, who were being watched by a crowd of around 50 in front of the stage in the rain & a further 50 or so sheltering at the bar. It was a very surreal experience at gone 4am on a residential street.

At 4.30am a curtain came down & then raised for the band to play a final encore, but not before one lad got on stage & proposed to his girlfriend. She said “Yes”. As the last song was being played I headed home. I didn’t get back to sleep again or was it all just a dream?

Around 9.30am, had I been asleep, I would have been awoken by a drum & bagpipe quartet who were marching through the streets of O Vicedo on a route that took them below our open window & to stop but play a few numbers in a cafe a couple of doors down. They marched back past us as we were loading up the car.

We had a coffee & shared a croissant in the cafe the quartet had vacated, then hit the road south for the second stage of our trip. I had several stops of interest planned & the first was Pontedueme described as a beautiful village thanks to it’s location between the sea, a river and mountains. It was ok, but more interesting was a field full of competitors with sticks in their hands appearing to be worm hunting, but more confusingly another group were playing rounders with their sticks & using a piece of wood as a ball.

Next stop was Camelle, a village with stunning windswept beaches, but not in our eyes. Then it was on to Camarinas, an important fishing place and also famous for it’s bobbin woven lace. For us the biggest thing of note was a tribute to the clean up operation after the worst oil spill in Spanish history, when the Prestige oil tanker sunk & leaked 63,000 tonnes of heavy duty oil in 2002, which washed up on Iberian coasts.

We then visited the windswept beach of Praia de Nemina, which was clearly a haunt for surfer dudes, then we hotfooted it to Cabo Fisterra. The Romans thought that this was the earth's westernmost point and therefore that the world ended here. It was their finisterrae, or land's end. Cabo Fisterra has a large, but ugly lighthouse.

There were a lot of walkers or pilgrims coming and going, because we discovered that the Camino Fisterra is a unique route, because it is the only trail that starts in Santiago de Compostela & takes pilgrims west to the stunning Atlantic coast of Galacia. There is a cross on the cape where travellers have left their shoes, walking sticks & stones.

Time was unfortunately against us, so we pushed on to our final destination of the day, Campsite A’ Vouda. During this journey we discovered that in Galicia all shops & supermarkets were closed all day on a Sunday, which was unfortunate because we had no provisions on board. Upon arrival, we were given a choice of several damp pitches looking out to sea. We chose the biggest. It had rained all day, but the evening was forecast to be dry until around 1am.

The tent went up fairly smoothly, other than I knelt on a protruding rock under our groundsheet it totally buggered up my already buggered left knee. We had to buy an adapter to connect the electric, to allow us to amongst other things blow up our huge air beds. Without provisions, we were forced to seek out the onsite restaurant for dinner & a drink. We chose the budget three course meal, which was pretty awful apart from our main course which was a whole poussin each, the meat of which just fell off the skeleton. Luckily we were both starving otherwise I’m not sure I could have eaten it. We had a bottle of red wine, which was so good we ordered a 2nd to take back to the tent.

Back at the tent, Jackie discovered that my air bed had gone down. We blew it back up, but when we finally retired for the night around midnight, it was already half deflated. This did not bode well for a good night’s sleep!!!

Song of the Day : Is It a Dream by Classic Nouveaux.Read more