Today we explored the coast just north of Pontevedra, it is quite close to the port of Santander so we thought if it was nice we could come over on the ferry one day with the Caterham and spend a week or so in the north of Spain.
It didn’t inspire us so I suppose it was a successful day as it has saved us wasting our money in the future. Actually the first little village called Cambarro was good with lots of grain stores on stilts (to keep ot the rats) and nice stone cottages. It might be over run by tourists in summer but today it was fine.
Next stop was Saxenxo, “the Marbella of Galicia” according to the Insight Guide and that is a fair description, concrete flats and hotels and a large marina, not our cup of tea but quite smart.
The same cannot be said for the rest of the places we visited, they were very shabby.
According to the guidebook A Toxa is one of the most stylish resorts in Galicia. It looked a bit run down to us, the main hotel (which is huge) could do with a coat of paint and there were lots of weeds on the pavements. It does have a hot mineral spring which a soap company use to manufacture fancy soaps and cosmetics and there is a small church which is completely covered in scallop shells making it very picturesque. The church is 12th century but the shells were added in the 19th century probably to make it a tourist attraction when the mineral springs became a destination.
We have eaten a great many scallops on this holiday (they are a local delicacy, last nights plate pictured, 8 each) but it would have taken a lifetime to get enough shells to cover a church. Our final stop up the coast was Cambados, another disappointing town mostly of concrete buildings which swamp out the older buildings.
Tomorrow we will be up early and head off back down into Portugal and the airport, we should be back home in time for the band in the Vaults tomorrow night.
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