Wednesday August 14th to Monday August 26th Ria de Betanzos and Santiago de Compostella

 We left you as we headed from Sada to Ares at the north of the Ria de Betanzos.  The weather was calm and hot, we swam in the sea, dried in the sun, and on Thursday, we took our dinghy ashore.  We found the small fishing town of Ares celebrating the feast of the Assumption of Mary.  The seafront was decked with market stalls, the beach heaving with sun bathers, and every restaurant seat reserved.  We ate well back on board.

  

We returned on Saturday to Club Nautico de Sada, our arrival hailed with the greeting “Welcome back, this is your home now”.

Our ignorance of local holidays also led us to accidentally observe the feast of San Roque, a 13^th Century Majorcan priest, whilst visiting Betanzos on Sunday.  

The celebrating crowds filled the narrow streets, and party boats decorated with flowers and greenery, heavily laden with food and drink, offered trips up the river. 

Betanzos has many well preserved medieval streets and buildings, mingled with ruins ripe for investment.  The church of San Francisco is in excellent condition, with sarcophagi housing 16 members of the Andrade dynasty, starting with the 13^th Century Galician knight “O Boo” (Galician or Galego for “the good one”), whose family became lords of nearby Ferrol and Pontebeaume for hundreds of years. 

Legend states that O Boo funded the construction of seven churches, seven monasteries, seven hospitals and seven bridges.  O Boo’s tomb takes pride of place at the west end of the church, a large granite coffin sitting high on the backs of a wild boar and bear, the representative animals of the Andrade family, and topped with a resting knight in armour.

The main square of Betanzos is dedicated to more recent benefactors.  Two brothers, Juan and Jesus, from a local farming family, went to Argentina in the late 19^th Century to seek their fortunes.  Following several successful business ventures, Juan returned towards the end of the century, and settled in Betanzos, whilst Jesus visited frequently from Buenos Aires.  Seeing their impoverished homeland, they built schools, a nursing home, public laundries, homes for the disabled, the retired and more.  A large statue on a high plinth at the head of the Plaza de Hermanos (brothers) Garcia Naviera features two men, sporting fashionable business suits and moustaches, gazing benevolently over the town.

Club Nautico de Sada has a Fiat 500 for rental, by means of which we visited Santiago de Compostella on Tuesday.  The city of 100,000 is home to the regional government and parliament of Galicia, and has the richest collection of historic buildings in the region, centred on the Cathedral and the tomb of Saint James. 

Legend has it that James, the brother of Jesus, was buried in Galicia, and that his remains were found nearly eight centuries later.  An early 9^th Century hermit, seeing lights at night in a nearby forest, alerted the Bishop, who discovered Saint James buried with two of his disciples. This mythical discovery provided an opportunity for the Asturian King Alphonso II to prevent Galicia claiming independence.  Alphonso, hearing news of the discovery, built a church on the site of the earlier Roman village to house the remains, endowed the new development with other buildings, and sent a royal prince to govern Galicia from his newly founded Santiago (St James).

In recent decades, pilgrims from all over the world have increasingly made their way on foot, bicycle and other means, over hundreds of miles, from France in the west or Portugal in the south, their goal being the main cathedral square in Santiago.  As a centre for Christian pilgrimage, the city compares only with Jerusalem and Rome.  Whatever the basis of the myth of St James, and whatever the reasons that today’s pilgrims head for Santiago, it is a moving sight to stop and watch as pilgrims arrive in front of the cathedral, often after weeks of walking, many with large rucksacks, and not all young, to meet friends with a hug, a selfie, and the universal greeting “Buen Camino”.

On Wednesday 21^st August we sailed to the north east corner of Ria Betanzos and anchored for three nights.  Between reading, sunbathing and watching a helicopter cliff rescue, we motored our dinghy into Redes, an attractive small fishing village with narrow streets and stone cottages. 

Arriving at low tide, we came ashore with wet muddy feet and footwear covered in seaweed, and sought a water tap.  We took a clifftop coastal walk eastwards, with views over this corner of the Ria and access to more remote beaches.

After returning again to Club Nautico de Sada on Saturday, we cycled on Sunday to Pazo de Marinan, a 15^th century manor house with formal topiary gardens and orchards.  The Paza overlooks the river Mandeo as it flows from Betanzos and widens into the Ria.  The property stayed in the same family for four centuries until the last in line died without wife or children and left his home to the provincial government.  It’s now a small museum and used for training courses.

 

The garden wall bears a plaque dedicated to a 19^th Century benedictine monk and explorer who founded a mission to Australia from where he sent Eucalyptus seeds to his friends at the Pazo, the first to reach this region.  Brother Rosendo Salvado guessed correctly that the species would take well to the warm wet climate of coastal Galicia.  Eucalyptus grows rapidly, recovers well from fire, and with intense logging, now represents 30% of Galician forests.  It is exported as wood pulp for the paper industry, and used in mussel rafts.  Eucalyptus may, however, be too successful, with forestry officials alert to its threat to biodiversity.

Returning to Sada, we stopped for lunch at A Cabana, with white tablecloths, views over the estuary and Veal Jacobus.  Somewhere between a Wiener schnitzel and a chicken Kiev, this dish comprised slices of veal, ham and cheese, coated with breadcrumbs.   Ideal for hungry cyclists.

Monday was windless, allowing us to remove the sails, and alert Coruna boatyard to the need for a few repairs over winter.