A very short (2.5 hours) but surprisingly foggy hop from Cedeira to here this morning. It’s a shame really because until we hit the wall of mist the scenery was stunning and the sea beautiful. Still now the sun is shining again the sky is blue and we have a lovely berth close to the old town.

So we have toured A Coruna on foot & on bike now and have almost worked out the lay of the land in this city which is spread over several bays and has sea on many sides. It has a fairly unique architecture with tall buildings covered in glass windows - lots of them. There are the usual impressive Spanish squares & churches and the odd bit of unusual modern art thrown in. Mostly since we have been here it had been windy, very windy - which is why we are still here 6 days on. It’s not that it’s not a nice place but it’s really not a 6 day place & we are keen now to move on.

We have had some fun though, we have both read a lot & I have managed to get a gel pedicure and now have lovely soft feet again with coral toe nails so not wasted time.

A 40 minute €10 return ticket very efficient train journey got us to this city of pilgrims today. Very touristy but definitely worth the trip as it is a beautiful historical place where pilgrims walk miles & miles to see the remains of Saint James in the cathedral. We just came by train and although we saw the cathedral (sadly mostly under plastic wrapping due to renovations) \240we didn’t queue the 1 hour or so to see the casket with St James in it in the crypt.

The rest of the city has been lovely \240& we had a delicious lunch of various raw fish & local pulpo of course. We have walked miles but not nearly as far as the pilgrims do and we did it without the wooden staffs that the pilgrims use.

Finally we are heading out today. A Coruna has been fab but we are ready to move on now. Next we are heading towards an anchorage near Camarinas.

We have arrived at our anchorage for the night in this sheltered estuary on our way down the Costa del Morte (Coast of death). Tomorrow we continue south around Cap Fisterra (Spains most westerly point).

It was a trouble free trip and as an extra benefit we saw lots and lots of dolphins - at least 30 or 40 in small pods of 6-10. \240As always my photos of them are a disaster😱as you can see. One of these days I will get a great pic!

It was quite chilly earlier so we had to give up sitting out on the flybridge after 3hours of misty damp rain. Inside was nice and cosy. Thankfully the sun is now starting to come out& it should be a nice evening.

A short but sweet anchorage, very calm & relaxing place but it’s time to move on again. Here are a few photos from our stay.

A fabulous trip here to Muros this morning in lovely undulating sea & sunny weather. Lots and lots more dophins & lots more missed dolphin photos! Gorgeous coastline & amazing sea birds - pure perfection. We passed Cap Fisterra on our way here, Spain’s most westerly point at 9 degrees the next time we will be this far west will be just before Lisbon. For the next few weeks we are pretty much due South all the way & it certainly feels warmer.

We arrived here about 12.30 but the marina has no space for a boat our size until tomorrow so we are saving even more money by anchoring up outside the harbour for free. Muros is a really pretty village in a beautiful estuary & I know we are going to love it here.

We did have one scare though. When we got back from our delicious seafood lunch with wine we thought the boat had moved it’s anchor, it seemed further away. Actually the tide had gone in a lot so it just looked further, in fact it is holding well.

Let’s just say it appeared to be holding well until the wind picked up and we were on the move 😱. After several aborted attempts to re-anchor we have hopefully found somewhere it will hold otherwise it’s going to be a long night. If only the wind would drop that might help.

This is a delightful Galician village set in beautiful surroundings. If we had to compare it to anywhere it would be a small Dartmouth or Fowey. The pilot book said that when you passed Cap Fisterra the weather improves & everything feels a bit wealthier and that is certainly true here. We are sitting in the lovely marina in 25 degrees full sunshine watching the world go by. Lots of yachts arriving here constantly, British, French, Dutch, German & Swedish - it’s just amazing how all of a sudden the world is out on their boats.

Today we got the bikes out and did a beautiful cycle through the pine & eucalyptus wooded hills to San Francisco (the next bay) the views were stunning & we had a lovely smell of pine. We arrived at a lovely beach and stopped for a sunbathe, swim & picnic lunch. The swim was a little chilly so Andrew refused to join me but it was very very refreshing on a lovely hot day.

Sadly this is our last day here, some rougher sea weather is coming in on Tuesday so we want to get to Vigo ahead of that. It looks like we might be stuck in Vigo for a good few days but it’s a bit bigger than here so we will be able to keep ourselves busy.

We have just arrived here in Vigo still in Galicia. Our last stop in Northern Spain before we head into Portuguese waters. This is our 21st stop in 3 months since we first left the UK. \240Andrew asked me today if I was enjoying retirement & I have to wholeheartedly say YES - I so far have not missed work once but we have constantly been on the move & seeing new places so it’s probably not surprising. Is Andrew enjoying retirement - he says absolutely YES but he still has board calls and the odd work thing to do so is still only really 90% retired.

Lovely trip here again today with bright sunshine, light winds and lots more dolphins 🐬🐬🐬🐬 this time playing in our wake and loving it. Since I have stopped trying to photograph them you will have to take my word for it.

I am not sure if I mentioned it before but Galicia like Cantabria & Basque regions also has its own language which is quite different from Spanish but shares some similarities with Portuguese. Our Portuguese is fairly non existent so this is a bit tricky but it is giving us a bit of an opportunity to prepare ahead of arriving in Porto hopefully in about 6 days time weather permitting.

Genius husband moment.

Whilst anchoring in Muros last week we had a pretty rough night (I may have already mentioned it) and managed to bugger up the anchor roller by the constant swinging and jerking on it in the winds and current. One of the bolts from the rollers loosened & dropped out and the other one completely bent resulting in the whole anchor housing being bent out of shape. Andrew thinks we may have already lost a bolt previously and not noticed so it was weakened before the stress we put it under. This all led to an unusable anchor and therefore no ability to anchor up until it was fixed.

Option 1 - buy a whole new Anchor roller system from Prestige for £1500.00 😱

Or

Option 2 - deploy engineer Andrew to fix it 🤩 with 4 new bolts and brute strength.

Result - today with genius, perseverance & strength we have a working anchor for a few euros.

Whilst you are all sweltering in the UK we are getting the typical UK summer weather here.

Yes it’s raining and humid 😂 here so we are taking the open top (but closed today) tour of Vigo to discover the bits we may have missed & stay dryish. Sadly like the weather today Vigo hasn’t got a great deal of charm & even the bus tour struggled to find things of beauty here. We did have some bits of Galician music played at us sporadically & suddenly as we went around a roundabout with a horse statue we got horses neighing loudly in our ears 🤪 which was a surprise.

It is also a public holiday here today, St James Day so everything is shut so we can’t even go shopping & all cleaning & boat chores are done. \240Oh well time to hunker down & read our books and maybe I can talk Andrew into a game of scrabble later.

Most excitingly however on our search for things to entertain us here in Vigo until we can leave on Sunday we discovered that tomorrow night Rick Astley is playing here in Vigo. For only €8.50 per ticket we are now booked to see him in a small amphitheatre in the city park at 11pm (late night ahead) - never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down 🎼🎵🎶.

So far we have really struggled to find live music on our travels which is a shame because we love watching local music. Rick really doesn’t count because he isn’t local but it will do for now & it will be fun.

Another little train excursion today to this pretty town on one of the rias just north of Vigo. Another very inexpensive journey on a lovely clean and on time train. It does make you wonder why we cannot get the trains to work in the UK. Pontevedra has a pretty old town with tiny streets and lots of squares & monuments & churches. We climbed our first tower in a while & had a lovely lunch of mostly seafood tapas except for the pigs ears which really was a bit of a pigs ear and not nice to eat 😝.

Another day trip we have done whilst in Vigo was a ferry over to Cangas in the other side of the estuary so that we could do a bit of a country/coastal walk. It was a lovely trip on a very hot day & we did manage the walk & a lovely lunch. On our walk we saw the huge derelict Masso Factory which until the mid 80’s was a huge local employer of women who did the fish cannery & whale processing plant. It was an empire built up by 4 generations of the Masso family from the late 18th century, initially salting and preserving fish and then moving into canning. Once whaling was banned it closed and now stands sadly derilict. The Masso family still own a fish cannery & museum in Pontevedra but no longer in Cangas. It is hoped that they will raise enough money to preserve this amazing piece of history for the area and turn it into something useful.

One thing we sadly didn’t get to visit during our time in Vigo was the Cies Islands because as a protected park you need a permit and there were none available. So we missed what is supposed to be one of the worlds most beautiful beaches 😔. Another time perhaps - or when we are on our way back in a few years time. The bay around the islands has a unique small species of dolphin so although we didn’t see the islands we did see lots of the local dolphins.

Part 7 - Portugal - Oporto to SW Spain