Camiño Dos Faros Day 5

Today we walked from Muxia to Nemiña, a tough stretch of walking but excellent. The weather was perfect, the scenery was fantastic and we even managed to adopt a Galician guide to show us the way. What more could we ask for?

Nosa Señora de Barca at Muxía

Keen eyed readers will spot that we have missed out a chunk of the Camiño. The original plan involved walking from Camarinas to Muxia yesterday. This was just too far, we were knackered from the previous day and the weather forecast was poor. We decided to have a rest day, got a taxi for most of the way (Praia do Logo) and after a 10km walk ate a late lunch and had a rest. The weather turned out to be OK, Christine even had a swim in the sea (very short), but taking a break was a good move as the last two days are tough.

O Camiño Dos Faros Day 4

Today's walk was huge in every sense of the word, huge scenery, huge distance and hugely knackered at the end.

Ancient fields near Laxe

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that my preferred style of walking involves staying in local accommodation as near as possible to the end of each day's walk. Ideally this means a looking to find a hotel or something similar about every 25 kms or so, allowing for around 8 hours walking a day. I try to plan a schedule in advance, and adapt the desirable to the available. When I do this, in order to make things work I am sometimes over optimistic about what is possible. Today was one of those days. We walked 35 hard and difficult kilometres from Laxe to Mourin, a hamlet to the north of Camarinas, arriving after 9 and a half hours with wet sore feet.

O Camiño Dos Faros Day 3

Day 3 on the Camiño Dos Faros and a great day's walking, approaching epic!

Early morning near 

The big change, after yesterday, was the weather. Last night's monsoons were replaced by a dry but fresh sunny day with white puffy clouds racing across an otherwise blue sky. The light was great, clear and crisp, presenting some great scenery in the best possible way.

O Camiño Dos Faros Day 2

One word provides an all too succinct summary of today: 'wet'. It was drizzling as we left our lovely hotel at about 9-30, and raining properly about 30 minutes later. In the day long weather battle between good and evil, good turned up off stage for just a few minutes early afternoon but decided he had better places to go and the rain came down even harder. After sticking with the route until late afternoon we cut our losses at about 4.30, took a big shortcut across the final headland and dropped down into Porto do Corme. Almost impossible to imagine but as we entered what I suspect is a sad little town even in the sunshine the rain took on monsoon proportions. After roaming the deserted streets for about 30mins we found our accommodation, an apartment, and started the not insignificant task of drying ourselves out.

A Dolmen - maybe

O Camiño Dos Faros - Day 1

Just finished an amazing lunch at the end of a great day's walking. Michelin star food and fabulous scenery, yes I'm back in Spain. I'm walking the Camiño Dos Faros, the Lighthouse Way, a 200 km walk around the northwest corner of Spain. The coastline is known as the Costa de Morte, a name given to it by English sailors for sadly obvious reasons. Well we have survived our first 12 km and it's definitely thumbs up, so far so good.

Fishermen at Malpica

On the GR1 with Rebecca and Barry

Rebecca and Barry are zooming along the GR1 as I write, heading from east to west and have now completed Stage 7.  Lovely to get their feedback - very helpful - and the pictures bring back great memories of Spain.  I remember Kin from my last trip.  Christine and I were the only guests, but she still made us welcome and prepared the most wonderful food.  You can follow their progress by going to this link.  All the pictures in this blog are from Rebecca and Barry.

"We've just reached Gironella after 10 walking days from the coast. We are charmed by the GR1 so far and the best is still to come - heading into the Sierra de Cadi next. Your GPS route track and the Viewranger map tiles (which were preselected for me by the app and which I downloaded before we left) have been excellent and invaluable. Walking against the guidebook, and with some very sketchy waymarking, it would have been a nightmare trying to navigate without it. There have been a couple of re-routes since your track, but nothing major. Walking with a GPS which records our progress and mileage in real time has been a revelation to me - although I am still a bit worried about such reliance on fallible technology!

GR1 - Accommodation Updates

Judging by the emails I'm getting, hikers from all over the world are making their way to Spain to walk the GR1 with the help of my guide book  Fingers crossed, I am of course totally confident will find their way,  agree with me that this is an amazing walk and come back making plans for their next trip to Spain.

On the GR1 to Paresotas

The guide is based on my style of walking and involves going from place to place and staying in local accommodation.  Historically, of course, the Spanish countryside was awash with locally run bars, restaurants, and hotels, but as the countryside emptied the purchasing power to support these facilities declined dramatically.  Some of those that remain are hanging on by the skin of their teeth and hopefully the business provided by GR1 walkers will make a small but valuable contribution to their survival.  Inevitably, however 'things change' and places close.  More optimistically new places open up or more likely as more people walk the route additional places to stay are found, places that despite my best efforts I missed.  It's amazing, but even in this day and age some 'hotels' in Spain keep their electronic footprint to the absolute minimum and exist despite not having email never mind a website.