The Spanish Rias

A personalised scarf for Katie, started in the Bay of Biscay!

So we spent three wet and windy days back in Ares, where we first landed in Spain. It literally didn’t stop raining for about a day and a half, apparently we had the tail end of a hurricane that was headed for the UK but came south instead! We wandered round the harbour to the fishing quays and chatted with the local fishermen, who were also stuck in harbour by the bad weather. They were busy mending a huge heap of nets in their shed, seemingly unfazed by the half dozen cats wandering over everything. Reuben was quite taken with the cats, and one of the fishermen thrust a skinny cat at us, proclaiming, ‘This is the Queen, she is the mother of all the other cats. We call her Cleopatra’!

As soon as the big swells (4 to 5 metres) calmed down, we left the marina and went back out to the anchorage. We followed the fishermen’s advice to wait a day for the seas to calm before venturing out. Instead, we took the dinghy, with our newly-fixed outboard engine, up the rἰa to the town of Puentedueme. The ria carried on under the old 16-arch bridge to a nature reserve but the tide was too low for us to continue, so we contented ourselves with a portion of churros in a roadside café and topping up the petrol can. On the way back, the sun came out and we stopped at the lovely little town of Redes for a beach visit. 

Redes Beach

Our friends on ‘Spirit of Mystery’ had waited out the storm in la Coruῆa marina, and on our return, the children were excited to see their boat, with its distinctive ‘Cornwall’ spinnaker flying, come sailing up the bay to join us.

                                      

We both headed out to sea the next day, feeling that we were finally making progress as the Torre de Hercules lighthouse disappeared from view. There wasn’t much wind to start with and the leftover swell gave us a surprisingly rolly ride, but despite Katie not wanting any lunch, nobody was seasick! As we gently rounded the top corner of Spain, we noted the large number of wind turbines planted on the headlands, a reflection of their windy position. By the time we passed the Islas Sisargas, the wind had indeed filled in and we were sailing along beautifully at over 6 knots.

 

Sailing well with spinnaker up

This next stretch of coastline is full of craggy headlands and rias, which are not long and narrow like the river Dart, as I had imagined, but large bays with entrances several miles wide leading to smaller rivers flowing down from the mountains. They had wiggly shorelines on each side, with each ‘dip’ giving a sheltered place to anchor, and usually the site of a town or beach.

Purse seine trawler off Muxia

Camarinas

We were headed for the Ria de Camariῆas. On our last voyage, we had stopped at the village of Muxia on the southern side of the ria, but this time, we anchored off the village of Camariῆas on the north side, opposite two strips of white beach. We dinghied ashore for an evening stroll and it was so warm and inviting (at 7pm!!) that we ended up having a full-on swim. The children were fascinated by the discovery of a dead squid on the beach, which, when prodded enough times, squirted black ink out all over Reuben! Since I hadn’t taken my camera ashore, we were begged to carry the soggy body back to the boat for a photo opportunity, so here it is!

 

Camariňas is a very picturesque town, with busy seafront cafes and a harbour full of fishing boats loaded to the max with crab pots. A bizarre statue of a woman in the town intrigued us. It turned out she was busy making ‘bobbing lace’, a skill for which the town was renowned. We visited the little ‘Museo do Encaixe’ and were intrigued to see young children busily making lace alongside older women. Apparently, girls as young as five started to learn, and took till the age of 12 to say they had fully mastered it! The lady at the museum gave us a demonstration of it, and told us that she had been taught by her grandmother, and had taught her own daughter at the age of three! Local children still come to the museum for an hour’s practice every afternoon. Katie was keen to give it a go but upon enquiry at the little lace shop, it is not possible to buy a ‘beginner’s kit’, you have to be taught by an expert…

 

It was such a lovely still evening that our friends organised an evening on a little beach across the ria. They had happy memories of time spent there ten years previously on a different boat. Along with a Polish family on another boat, we dinghied and kayaked across to the entrance of the rἰa del Puente.  Sadly, a house had been built on the beach of their memories, so we decamped to an adjoining beach, which we had to ourselves. The adults relaxed with a few drinks while the children had a great time splashing in the sea and hunting for wood for a campfire. They did such a good job, they went on to build another one of their own, which was still blazing brightly as the sun started to set over the rἰa. A magical evening.

From Camariῆas, we continued south past the westernmost headland of Europe, Cabo Toriῆana, and around Cabo Finisterre. I was keen to walk out to the lighthouse there, which is the finishing point for the pilgrims on the ‘Camino de Santiago’, but sadly it was too far from the anchorage. Instead, we wandered along the beach and around the tiny village of Sardineiro, wondering what the strange stone structures dotted around were. They had crosses on the roof, so we assumed they were some sort of temple, but it seems they were old grain stores!

grain stores, high up on stone 'mushrooms'

What promised to be a peaceful anchorage turned out to be anything but, with a series of late-night explosions and unidentified bangs, hopefully not directed at us.

MUROS

We had a good sail from there to Muros, a much more prosperous town, certainly in olden times. Some of the buildings were now in a state of disrepair but there was still a lot of lovely archways and narrow, climbing streets. 

We clambered up the steps behind the church to an enticing patch of green visible from our boats. After two dead ends, we came to some private gardens, one with an open door and an old couple busily working the land. They waved us in cheerfully, and let the children climb across their land to a lovely viewpoint over the rἰa, with its shellfish farms, and of course, our boats moored in the middle. A spectacular view from an ‘allotment’.

Katie's photo

looking down over Ria de Muros

The wind filled in nicely the following day for a brilliant sail across the 9-mile wide Rἰa de Muros entrance, through a tricky rock-strewn channel towards the fishing port of Aguiῆo. Since we were sailing so well, it seemed a shame to stop early, so we carried on, past the Isla Salvora, an island marine reserve, and across the entrance to the Rἰa de Arosa to a lovely anchorage off the white beach at San Vicente. 

Sailing nicely

'Spirit of Mystery' disappearing in the swell

We managed to get school done early(ish) the next morning in time for a morning trip to the beach, where the children played in the waves while we admired our boats silhouetted in front of a misty backdrop of mountains.

San Vincente beach

We returned to find several small boats anchored around us with lines trailing from their cockpits. At the end of each line was a patch of bubbles, showing the presence of a diver below who was fed air through the 100m- long hose by a compressor on board. One of these patches of bubbles was right near our boat so we decided to hold off firing up the engine until he had finished collecting his haul of (presumably) shellfish.

We ghosted out from the anchorage after lunch and enjoyed a leisurely sail inside the Isla de Ons, again a marine nature reserve and unavailable for us to visit without a pre-obtained permit. The children spent hours amusing themselves trying to catch fish – unsuccessfully, but they were learning how to keep the lines down in the water when you are moving. They experimented with various items before filling a bag with stones and shells and finally getting it to sink!

We were aiming for Bayona but had been quite happy sailing at under three knots in the fitful breeze, so we decided to anchor off yet another lovely beach at the entrance to the Ria de Vigo. It turned out to be full of nudists soaking up the sun’s rays! Not to be deprived of our anticipated swim, we waited until the numbers had dropped significantly (along with the sun), then found a quiet patch to land and enjoyed a swim in the cool sea.

The nudist beach, looking out to sea, for obvious reasons!

The next morning, we had a ‘school expedition' out to the headland, taking sketchbooks with us. As we sat under the shade of the lighthouse, watching the surf crashing on the rocks below, we noticed that it seemed to be increasing in ferocity, and wondered idly about our dinghy. By the time we returned to our side of the headland, the surf had indeed picked up and was hurling itself twenty foot up the beach with each wave. Hmmm, not ideal conditions to launch a dinghy. Rather than risk all getting swamped (and soaking my camera), Katie and I stripped to our undies and pushed Dave and Reuben safely though the waves before swimming out to the boat after them. A refreshing end to a walk ashore!

 

We then headed across the Ria de Vigo to Bayona. We felt too lazy to explore that afternoon so saved ourselves for the next day, only to wake and find thick fog had settled in… We have had a little wander around the old town but I think the splendour of the city and its castle are lost in the mist! This will probably be our last stop in Spain before we reach Portugal, with yet another language for the children to learn a few words of!