10 May – end June 2009
For the remainder of May we made our way slowly along the north coast of Spain. The weather has been generally quite bad this year with a lot of rain, strong winds and high swell, interspersed with short periods of good weather when we took the opportunity to sail on to our next port of call. We had some excellent sails, but also some long periods of motoring due to a lack of wind.
The coast in this part of Spain is incredibly beautiful – tree covered mountains with flooded river valleys between (rias). It’s marvellous to be able to anchor in the rias as it is so beautiful and peaceful.
There are many English people sailing in this area – everyone is very friendly, we invite each other for coffee, drinks etc on each other’s boats, and we all help each other out with advice, jobs and passing on information.
We have also found that the Spanish people we meet are very friendly and helpful – even the woman in the bread shop tries to teach us the names of the different Spanish loaves!
Ports of call:
Ribadeo – a small town on a hill with some interesting buildings.
Viveiro – very attractive old town with many narrow streets where we first saw the enclosed balconies which were fashionable in the 18th-19th centuries and are very common in this region.
Cedeira – at the top of the ria, the old town built on the side of a hill.
Sada marina – from here we had an interesting visit to La Coruna on a grey day, and the historic town of Betanzos which also has an amazing garden, built by a Victorian philanthropist for education and entertainment with grottos, statues, winding flights of steps, and features such as historic scenes on painted panels, scenes from different countries in relief, clock faces with times from around the World, etc.
Corme – a convenient stop to break up a long journey where we anchored for a couple of nights.
Ria de Camerinas – particularly beautiful scenery where we had a lovely walk in the woods.
We rounded Finisterre in a flat calm on 1 July and arrived in the Rias Baixos; there are 4 main rias here with only very short distances between them – a marvellous cruising ground where we intend to stay until the end of August.
Ria de Muros – anchored off Muros then visited Portosin marina briefly to fill up with water, anchored off Punta Aguieria for lunch then returned to Muros for a few days which is a very charming small town with lots of old stone buildings arcaded streets and narrow alleys.
Ria de Arosa – the largest ria in Spain with large areas of mussel farms between which you sail. We caught up with most of our friends from La Rochelle here and have been enjoying their company again. We have been anchored off the beaches at Pobra de Caraminal and Rianxo and were delighted that our new anchor held firm even in a gale.
We’ve now spent a couple of weeks in the marina at Vilagarcia, initially to celebrate a friend’s birthday and our wedding anniversary with a meal out with our friends from La Rochelle. We then stayed for a fiesta; a group of us went out and had a marvellous evening which ended with a bonfire and fireworks. We also decided to take advantage of a friend’s welding skill to have a modification made to the solar panel fixing so that both panels could be permanently mounted above the bimini. This has now been done and we are about to sail around to the next ria for a week or so.
For more photos click here
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