Eight below

Yep that was the temperature overnight. Eight below zero. Perhaps that was why it was easy to sleep in. When we got to the car it had a real frost on it. Took a while to get off.

We had a bit of a wander around the town of Coca before the castle opened up. A few items of historical interest. They apparently were the birthplace of a Roman emperor, Theodosius, they have some other interesting remnants of buildings, but the most interesting thing we saw was a seniors workout area near an old church tower. Marjan had a bit of a knee workout.

We finally got into the castle and did the tour. It was a bit eerie, they took our money, told us what to expect, showed us in the door, and locked it behind us. Oh well, we walked around and up and saw what was there to see. It must have been an impressive place in the past.

By the time we got back down it was about 11:30 and probably had got to zero, so after a coffee we hit the road for Madrid. It was not long before we saw the snow capped mountains again as that was where we were headed. We were heading towards Segovia, where we had been a couple of weeks before. The views this time were a bit different as the mountains with snow on them looked much more imposing. Also Segovia against that backdrop looked magical.

We were quite glad that this time we took the tolled motorway, rather than the scenic route we used to get over the mountains last time. The road actually went over the mountains above the snow line, and then under the mountain in another long tunnel. We later heard it had snowed in Madrid. A little earlier than normal. Just our luck. Anyway we got over it all and to Tia Jose's place where we had another wonderful reception, lunch and much laughter. Anna came over and we skyped Laura so it was a bit of old home week. A nice way to finish off the travels with Marjan. 

The last bit of travel will be the trip to the airport tomorrow. So it's goodbye from the Travelling With Marjan blog. Might have a few updates for Marjan rather than from her, but it will need a new name.

Big

Today was a big driving day. We had decided to do most of the drive towards Madrid today and have an easier day to navigate the capital's traffic tomorrow. So off early, by our new standards, at 9:30.

So the big, high bridges continued along the Asturian coast. Obviously if you want a 120kmh freeway you cannot have the road winding up and down the coastal valleys, so the road just goes right over the top of all of them. What is most impressive though is that each bridge has a name. You would think they would run out of names eventually. James by the way had no idea the motorway existed and kept telling us to stop killing cows. Bloody thing has no idea.

After a little while we headed inland, and soon spotted a range of mountains covered in snow. "We will be going around them" I assured Marjan. Well we kept getting closer and they kept getting bigger, bloody impressive in fact. Well I was wrong, "again" according to Marjan, and the road went straight for the mountains and the snow. Marjan was shivering just looking at it. I love the little village at bottom left, and the lighter clouds above the valley, is actually just higher, snow capped mountains.

The lookout where we took that photo is like every other wayside stop on Spain's motorways, it has good signage, a nice exit, good parking, occasionally a table and chairs, and no toilet. The road then headed straight towards a big snow covered mountain, with snow all around us and the trees dusted beautifully with it, and headed right into the mountain. The tunnel came out after four Km, and we felt the need to stop again, this time somewhere with a toilet. We filled the car, and had a coffee to warm us up. Is this an amazing location for a petrol station/bar/restaurant/shop?

Feeling quite justified in avoiding the Picos, which are higher than this, and with narrower roads, we decided to take a little risk. As a semi-planned detour, we got off the motorway, and headed for some minor roads along the valley of the Rio Luna. Some very nice scenery. Also, we managed to find a place to park in the sunshine, surrounded by snowy peaks and have a chorizo and salad roll. 

This would be a lovely place to spend some time, we just merely drove through and stopped to take a picture or two.

Eventually we got out of the mountains and on to the high plains of Castilla Leon. Big skys, big plains, big wineries. This was a complete change of scenery and geography from the coastal hill of Asturias and the rugged Cantabrian mountains. After about an hour of this we finally lost sight of all snowy mountains.

As I said we had decided to make this a mostly driving day, so we powerd on through the high plains and eventually I got tired so we stopped at another bar/petrol station/gift shop/hitch hiker drop-off point and had a break. I could have purchased some Asturian Ria Baxas Albariño or a whole Jamon, some pottery or a three course meal, but we settled for a soft drink and a morcilla tapa. Feeling better with morcilla in my belly we headed on through some Spanish high plains pine forests. They look nothing like the German variety, but I was too tired to stop and get proof for you.

We eventually reached our destination: Coca. Coca is, by the way, in sight of a whole new range of mountains. Those mountains seem to have a lot of snow on them. We will tackle them tomorrow. Marjan will make me pay for the cold. The reason for stopping here is that it is handy to Madrid, and, it has the most outrageous looking castle. It really looks fake, but is in fact a 15th century building. It also currently houses an Agricultural College specialising in forestry. Unfortunately it was closed when we got there and we could not be bothered coming back in an hour, so we will probably visit in the morning. In the meantime we settled for a walk around it.

Anyway after six hours or so on the road we are having a night in. Yet again we have the Casa Rural to ourselves, like we had the hotel in Cudillero. Yet again we will be the only people in the restaurant. They are opening early for us at 8:30. Yet again we will probably eat too much. Yet again we will put our heads down after a happy day. I think though we may have a record tonight, for the second night in a row we have individual pillows rather than those hateful single double width pillows they use here. I do love my own pillow!

To answer an avid reader's question. No, not all of our meals have been great. Some have been merely OK. We have not had a dud meal though, and we have had one or two superb ones and quite a few very good dishes. For me it is probably the difference as much as anything. The tastes of things from my past, and the taste of things I normally do not have, the taste of things I just cannot get in Australia. We have tried to have local specialties as well, so the recipes are probably well tried and tested. But the reality is I would feel more confident eating at a Spanish petrol station than at a country Aussie pub. My morcilla today, though not excellent was not bad. Having said that, I look forward to Christmas lunch at said avid reader's house; the food is always decent there and the company is pretty good too.

The most beautiful town in Spain

Luarca names itself the most beautiful town in Spain. It has been truly lovely, and I regret that because of tiredness and injury we did not walk as much of it as I would have liked. The hospitality was almost embarrassing. The hotel owner would not let us pay anything at the bar and even shouted us breakfast on the last morning. 

We had a final walk around on the final morning and bought a picnic lunch.....a salad roll would be a bit of a change from our recent meals. After that we set off along the Asturias countryside. The hills come right down to the sea, and the rivers cut through though hills. That means some of the bridges on the motorway are truly awesome. Over a kilometer long and seriously high. In fact so high I was instructed not to look by Marjan. Later when I went to have a look in the afternoon Marjan was afraid it would drop on us. That IS our little polo at the bottom. The road,on the left is the 4 lane, 120kmh freeway. The one on the right is merely a local road.

As we had chickened out on the potentially icy roads in the mountains of Picos de Europa we needed to fill that bit of the itinerary. We liked Luarca and the people so much we considered staying. However some previous research, and a recommendation from a blog follower, gracias Encarni, led us to choose another fishing village nearby called Cudillero. It was only thirty or fourty kilometers away, so we stopped off at Cape Video( oh OK Cabo Vidio) where there was a lighthouse and an opportunity to see the coast.

Got to Cudillero, and I must say that it would give Luarca a shake as most beautiful town in Asturias, let alone anywhere else. Another fishing village, but this one has even less flat land that Luarca, and no river running through it. The place just goes straight up. It is quite colourful as they seem to have done a nice paint job. There is essentially one road through the town that leads around the port area, where you can park, and then leads through and out of town where there is no parking, except for a few lucky locals. The unlucky locals have to park between the port and the town in an area dedicated for them. The visitors like us have to park further out of town. More or less from where the first pic below is taken. Of course I am getting good at the Spanish parking thing, so I drove into town, drove up onto a curb, switched my hazard lights on, because that makes everything you do OK, and unloaded the car, then drove back out of town and parked, walked back in and checked into our hotel.

What I found most interesting is climbing around in the streets of the town. It is essentially a series of stairs and alleyways that work their way up and around the hillside. It is really difficult to explain how the place hugs the hillside and how steep it all actually is. At one point I was in a lane way where I could touch a front door with either hand and had steps leading down to someone's roof in front of me. I was fascinated by the sheer number of service hatches for water, sewage etc. in all the lane ways and stairways. Obviously they need a huge number to be able to get to all the piping.

Really all we did was walk around a bit. Have our picnic lunch......in the car by the sea, because it was really cold at lunch time, have a cofee, and walk around some more. So a rather staid day, the only real danger was having a freeway drop on us. A very pleasant day though.

Bye for now!

Seafood, knees and other oddities

Before dinner last night I went for a walk. Marjan did not join me as it was cool and drizzling. Luarca looked very pretty.

As previously advised when in Asturias you have to have a fabada. I ordered it as an entree, whilst Marjan had the artichokes, which are becoming a favourite for her. The fabada came out in a tureen. It could have fed the whole family, in fact any whole family. It was seriously big. The waiter, who is amazingly friendly, but who talks way too fast, laughed and said "if you eat that you'll be doing well". I interpolate words, coz between the rapidity of his speech, the laughter and the Asturian accent I miss the odd word. It was awesome. For mains as promised we ordered fish. After Marjan's fish with tail in mouth episode in Toledo, she made me ask if the sardines came whole, with heads and tails. The waiter looked at me oddly, laughed again, and in a very expressive voice said "Claro !!". So I ordered them and Marjan in an attempt to avoid food that looks at her ordered the lubina (sea bass) which we were told was brought in that day. Of course the lubina was a whole fish as well but Marjan ate it anyway and like the sardines it was delicious. By the way, they brought our wine out in a jug last night. We are really going downhill fast; buckets next.

Let me just tell you about the seafood menu. This is not the flashiest biggest place here. It is a bar/restaurant attached to the hotel. They had six species of fish, two species of lobster style things, three species of crabs, two species of prawns, three species of clams, including one that looks like a thin tube, two species of squid, octopus, barnacles, sea urchins, oysters, mussels, scallops and I may have missed some more because as Marjan has quite accurately stated about our trip "I have eaten so much my mind has gone". I suppose it reflects the variety in the markets. Even in the Trujillo supermarket, a town of a little over ten thousand people, hundreds of miles from the sea, the seafood section would rival most Queen Vic market seafood stalls. 

So,why am I going about last night. Well because I am lying in my hotel room bored out of my brain. My leg up, knee bandaged with an ice pack on it. Half way through the night I woke with a swollen and sore knee and am being a responsible adult, much as it pains me, and doing the RICE thing. Marjan is out and about in the town, hopefully not eating as she may then lose her mind and get lost. No she is not looking after me. I knew where I stood the other day, when, she pointed out that I should clean leaf litter off my boots before venturing onto a rocky ledge. When I thanked her for looking after me, she said "I have to; I probably would not make it out of here alone!". Thirty two years and going strong.

So, given my recumbent state I thought I might share some oddities, like the variety of seafood. Those wanting to spend time usefully should stop reading now. There are no more pictures!

The number of hunters and gatherers is quite surprising, particularly on weekends. It seems every second male capable of standing on two legs and whistling at his dog is out trying to shoot something on a Sunday in the country. The other key activity seems to be gathering mushrooms. We have seen what looked like family groups with baskets, out collecting. In our pre-packaged society, this makes me look twice.

In a dry land, at least parts, they have water everywhere. Little and bigger fountains and springs appear all over the place. You see older people at the village spring filling up their five lite water bottles, you see bush walkers stop at the fountain to fill up their water bottles. The springs and fountains appear all over the place and hark back to a much older time.

STOP has become Spanish. It makes driving easier as that is one road sign I am sure to respond to quickly enough, as opposed to the plethora of others, some of which take a while to understand. I love the indicative speed signs in blue which no one pays any attention to. Also the hook turns, I thought Melbourne was unique, where you pull into the right lane, face a stop sign, and only when safe turn left. Roundabouts with multiple lanes are always fun as well. I figure if I just go they will try to avoid hitting me.

Spaniards are part goat, their ability to go up and down all the bloody hills is amazing, even when wearing high heel shoes, or orthopaedic ones, on cobble stones. Walkers are everywhere and you have to watch out in small towns and country roads coz around any corner you are likely to see someone walking along the side of the road, sometimes holding a rope attached to a bull. Why is this important? Because footpaths and road verges are often an optional extra.

Pharmacists all seem to have external green neon flashing signs. They also have almost nothing in front of the counter. You have to ask for it and then the pharmacist gets it for you. Even something as innocuous as a knee bandage, for which by the way I had my knee measured. Medication is also incredibly cheap by Australian standards. We paid under €2 for a packet of 40 Voltaren anti-inflammatories.

Petrol stations are also weird. Who reckons it is a great idea to sell alcohol at a petrol station? Well I don't know the figures for alcohol related car accidents, but it is a rare petrol station that does not include a cafeteria or bar, which in Spain is only a change in emphasis. So we stopped at one recently and had a coffee. The local Guardian Civil Traffic guys were there, admittedly drinking cokes, but whilst we were there a couple of drivers came in orderd a beer or liquor and then drove off. 

Stork nests are bloody huge. We think we spotted one stork flying along a shallow river bed, but we have seen hundred of stork nests. There are some stretches of road where every power pole has at least one. As I say some of them are huge, I reckon I could sleep in some of them. My favourite was the one on the motorway sign indicating that we were heading for Salamanca. I can just imagine the chaos if one comes down during a long weekend (puente) traffic jam.

The TV shows on the box, which is always on at bars, are truly amazing. Marjan is quite often transfixed by them. I think there is an element of Japanese torture shows at play here. Oddly our favourite media-food moment was not TV based. It was sitting in an ancient building in Toledo, in a traditional wooden dining room, eating traditional spanish food and listening to ACDC.

Spanglish is everywhere. I was told that Spaniards are becoming esnobs (snobs) when it comes to menus, that the roads around Cañon De Sil can cause estress (stress) and that eating was somebody's hobby ( pronounced with Spanish j). Lots of signs and written phrases appear in English. My favourite so far has been Botijo Shop, Cool Gifts. Botijo is such a Spanish word for such a Spanish article, and to pair it with shop and do the little pun in English, just stunned me. A Botijo is a clay water container that in its original form is slightly porous thereby being an evaporative cooler as well as container for the water.

Finally I love that almost all our accommodation has had a dedicated foot washer in the bathroom. For aging joints it is great toe be able to wash you feet and cut your toe nails in a small basin off the ground. They could shape them a little better to rest you foot in though.

I am so cultured!

Now really finally, my knee is magically cured. After a morning of RICE. I ventured out for some lunch. We found a lovely local fruit shop man who happened to sell local chorizo (smoky) and local cheese (mature and super) and a bakery that gave us a lovely warm bread stick and we sat by the river eating and being gawked at by locals. We were on our way back to,the hotel when I decided a glass of cider would be in order, being Asturias, the Spanish home of sidra. Apparently you have to have a bottle and it has to be poured out of these weird machines to 'break' the cider and get the taste right. So we did that; a wonderful local experience. On walking out of the bar I noticed that my knee was perfect again. The magic of sidra.

The coastal route

After the rigours of yesterday, our aim was for an uneventful day. Marjan had recovered her ability to look at me without sneering sometime during our final Galician dinner.  We enjoyed sharing a couple of vegetable type entrees, but Marjan would not taste my baby squid in its own ink. After three meals, admittedly in a small part of the interior of Galicia, we did not agree that their food was the best. Not bad, just not better than the rest.

After a solid sleep we took stock over breakfast. We agreed that between us we had two healthy joints after yesterday's exertions, hence the aim of an uneventful day. 

We drove out with fog similar to yesterday. For slightly above an hour we wound our way around the Ribiera Sacra. We both agreed it was one of the more beautiful drives we have had. It would have been better if our hearts had not been in our mouths the whole time. The road out is what is called a Regional road, that means driving around hairpin bends on a road barely wide enough for two cars, with no road markings or verges, definitely nothing as fancy as barriers on the edges of cliffs. As we drove in and out of fog, in and out of heavily frosted areas, we were constantly impressed by the sheer beauty of the area. At one point we were climbing 10% grade. Fairly steep....think Mt Buffalo. And above and below us we could see steps going into the almost vertical vineyards. You can see a vineyard here on the right.

Luckily we only met one car coming the other way. I went as wide as I could slowed from 30kmh to zero and let him drive past me. Obviously a local as he was driving one-handed with a ciggie between his fingers and still manged to give me a finger wave.

When we finally got out of the valley and onto the high plain, the blood was able to flow back into my hand as I relaxed my grip on the wheel. We drove uneventfully along the higher ground of Galicia, had lunch at a roadside cafe/restaurant, before descending into a river valley for the run to the coast. The river valley was quite pretty and reminded us in part of some areas around South Gippsland. Might have something to do with the eucalyptus plantations along the whole length of the valley.

We made coast as it was hit by a few Atlantic squalls. After a little drive a long it we managed to find the town of Luarca. The hotel though eluded our attempts to locate it by car, so we got out and hunted it down on foot. We quickly settled into a nice little hotel. Half the hotel is right on the harbour. Our half, has the sailor's mission between us and the water. We can see the harbour at an angle. Ah well. 

We managed to get a bit of a walk around town in between showers. Unfortunately the giant squid museum was closed. Perhaps tomorrow!

Lovely little place. Our aim is to relax, walk on relatively flat land and eat. I am determined to have an Asturian fabada, a specialty of the region, and of course we will have to have seafood in a fishing village. So apart from the first hour, we have managed an uneventful day; our joints are recovering; Marjan has not signed the divorce papers and all is well with the world.

Who knew?

We are slowly creeping towards Spanish horarios. We woke at 8 and struggled to get up and breakfast some time after 9. The day was foggy, but we were under the fog. We had been serenaded by the babbling brook during the night, so all was relatively fine with the world. Who knew?

Over breakfast, as at over dinner, we listened to Radio Galicia. You could be in Ireland or Scotland. The Celtic influence in Galicia is very strong still. Galicia as you will all know was settled by Celtic folk before the Romans and as they were not ever driven out by the moors the Celtic influence is still strong. Bagpipes with a Spanish twist as wake up music. Who knew?

Our first mistake was believing our host about the walk, "go up the easy way and come back the steep way. Four hours at an easy pace. Lunch at Parada De Sil, and it should be easy". (Parada De Sil is the local metropolis of 150 inhabitants at the top of the valley/canyon). Who knew Galician humour was through dangerous understatement?

Well we got off on the wrong foot from the start. Believing the path started at the old mill by the brook we headed up that way. After fourty minutes of scrambling across the creek we gave up. The path was a few metres past the creek and was considerably easier. Who knew? 

The path was through old chestnut plantations. Yes chestnuts, hazels are wrong. Ignore everything I said about hazels yesterday. They are chestnuts, I tasted one and it was definitely a chestnut. Who knew? Alans however were in Spain and helped drive out the Romans. So much for our editor.

It looks as if the chestnuts were planted right up the whole valley. The lower and steeper landings appear to be abandoned. Probably because of the difficulty of getting machinery to them. Hand harvesting must be too expensive. Still fairly pretty mule tracks and walls dividing up the valley into chestnut paddocks. At various stages the leaves and nut husks were so deep it was difficult to tell what was under our feet. By the way my uncertainty on some facts is due to my inability to understand everything Gallegos tell me.

We kept climbing and eventually got into the fog. For a while we also left the chestnuts behind and were in an oak forest. Not big oaks like the Botanic Garden ones, but slightly bigger than the alcornoques of Extremadura. There was plenty of signs of wildlife, mostly where they had been rooting around for something underground. Also by the sound of gunfire and dogs across the valley. Hunters calling out and shooting. The sounds of nature. Who knew?

Marjan was struggling with the 'shallow easy climb', so we agreed that when we got to the top I would head down and come back with the car and get her for the trip back.

Eventually we broke through the fog and into beautiful sunshine above the fog. Where the sun had not reached the fields still had frost on them. This was now about 12:45 but the frost was yet to clear this higher ground. It appeared that chestnut farming still happens on the higher flatter ground. It also appears that cocks in Galicia crow after midday. Who knew?

We finally made it into the city. We found a bar and had a reviving coffee. We got there just before the locals rushed the place for pre-lunch drinks. I could catch the odd word, but Gallego remains a mystery to me. Nobody was unfriendly, but we were probably considered to be weird foreigners. After all we did not have a wine in front of us. Still Gallegos consider Asturians to be weird foreigners and people from Madrid may as well be from another planet. That's why I did not know what to do when I saw a man walking his bull, only a local would.

The break gave us enough energy to walk to a restaurant 100 metres away and have a three course lunch.  We had their €12 meal, because the €10 meal included tripe, and game though we have been, tripe is a step too far. We had a chestnut, capsicum, and mushroom empanada, we had pork loin with chestnut and mushroom and we had a sort of chestnut creme caramel. It was the biggest piece of empanada I have ever eaten. I think the whole thing must have been baked in a paellera three foot across. It was all ok, the pork was a little overdone, though the stuffing was beautiful. The chestnut dessert though has been classed by Marjan as the best dessert she has eaten in a longggg time. 

We checked out the recently restored communal washing area. Feeling better, particularly about our washing machine, Marjan decided she would make the attempt of the descent. Who knew?

It all started well, lovely sunshine through more rural laneways between chestnut fields and fairly flat walking to start with. We were full of chestnut and happy. The the sign for the road pointed off the edge of an admittedly smallish precipice. With much care we scrambled down through the rocks and got onto what with significant improvement could be called a goat track. The goat track appeared to be how the old time farmers would get around between their chestnut trees.

Things did not improve. In between bouts of reasonable walking, we had hairy scrambles down quite steep areas with little purchase. No option but to butt slide down a couple of sections. Still we were making headway and our accommodation appeared less like a doll house at the bottom of the canyon. 

We finally got to a vineyard that we knew was the last stretch before our babbling brook. The option was the road, or the path through the vineyard. The road was longer, so we took the latter. Who knew?

 It was quite steep and narrow between rock walls separating the two sections of vineyard. This obviously serves as a vineyard service lane. Still not too bad. When we got to the end of the vineyard the path was very narrow, with a very steep drop on one side. A couple of sections were quite hairy, and finally one was just not worth the attempt. After six hours, five hundred metres of climb, four hundred and fifty of descent we were tired enough that this would mean a fall down into some pretty rough scrub about five metres below us.

We looked back and the track through the vineyard looked really steep. But back up we went and back via the road. 

We are now lying on our beds, safely looking at the view out the window. Marjan has not spoken to me for a while. The search history on Chrome is showing a very recent bit of research into online divorce sites. I hope that another three course meal will revive her spirits. Still I think long walks are out for what remains of the trip. Three course meals, however, are always in fashion!

Galicia

We drove a lot today. We left Salamanca after breakfast at 9:30 and,did not get to our destination till about 3:30. At least it was an interesting drive. Shortly out of Salamanca we hit fog and that was our companion for the first fourty five minutes or so. We were relying on the motorway not dropping off a cliff because visibility was poor. We put on the radio and on came Ghostbusters, that was enough to clear the fog. "Who you gonna call?"

Once we cleared the fog we were driving in perfect sunshine, through the productive undulating plains of the upper meseta. Eventually we approached higher ground and yes it had snow. As we drove through the pass over the mountains the divide Castilla Leon from Galicia we had snow on either side of us. It was not heavy but it made us happy about giving the Picos de Europa a miss in a few days. If we had snow here, it would be quite heavy there. When we got to the other side of the mountains, the snow was even heavier behind us.

We went through a couple of complete changes in landscape, and one in language, they speak Gallego here. Eventually we ended up in the hills, if not mountains of Galicia. Very pretty apart from the logged areas of hillside. Very different to anything we had seen thus far. James decided to take us through the city of Ourense, which we had not expected. It is a very steep and hilly place and James had us crossing the river twice. Once probably to show us the Roman bridge...yes another one. A miscounted exit at a roundabout.....yes again, meant we were taking side street to get back on route. Interesting side streets. Though Ourense is a sizeable place we ended up driving up single lane streets that seemed to have a 10% grade. Marjan was cursing James.....very inventively and amusingly I must say.

Anyway eventually we got to the Ribeira Sacra as this area is called. The Sacred Shore, after the number of monasteries set up along the three rivers in the 12th and 13th centuries. We are not planning on visiting any of those monasteries. We are planning on tasting some Ribeira Sacra wine though and walking in between drinks. Truly lovely countryside now. High plains with amazing views and dry stone walls separating fields. Valleys with autumn colours and deep shade.

We saw a man walking his bull and waiting to cross the road. I did not know the proper etiquette so merely waved. In a one donkey town we ran into a traffic light. It was there so you did not crash into oncoming traffic in the one lane lane through the middle of town. The roads kept getting narrower and steeper. Marjan was telling me not to look, which made driving particularly difficult. Eventually we ran out of road and we were there. Rabacallos, is not a location known to James. I had had to bring up a map and just point at a spot to get him to get us here, but get us here he did. Gorgeous view out of the window and from the owners place.

The young woman in charge has a significant accent, Gallego, and I had to concentrate to follow her properly. We stowed our gear and went for a bit of a walk to stretch the legs after the drive. Glorious country. It is close to rainforest. Apparently this valley gets about 700mm. The Miño gets about 900mm. We have a lovely babbling brook about 100 metres away.

If you see a gap in the foliage in the hills in the shots, chances are it is a vineyard. 

We enjoyed walking under hazels, pretty trees that had strewn the paths with leaves and nuts and the prickly covering on the nuts. Broke one open to see if it tasted good, but it was fermenting, and I'll save the alcohol consumption for the Riberira Sacra Albariño we are planning to have with dinner. Yes we arranged an early dinner, they should be able to let us sit around eightish.

Apparently there is a bit of watersport around here in summer, but we will pass on that. Though it is warmer than Salamanca, and quite sunny, there was still a bit of nip in the air, and Marjan is mindful that the mountains with snow on them are just around the corner. So maybe a walk up out of the canyon, Cañon De Sil, and visit the town at the top for lunch. Should be a good days walk at a slow pace.