My Way: reality was waiting at Muxia

Know that Oz is having a cold winter.
On the other side of the world, Europe is suffering a heatwave. People are quietly dying, serious questions are being asked about preparedness...they have already recognised that the number of days over 40C is rising each year. In the short term they are asking weather predictions give better warnings, getting hospitals ready for a high influx of dehydrated and heat prostrated patients and building special air-conditioned public halls. For the longer term, radical planning stipulations include a choice of solar panels or earth roofing. Not everywhere but that gives a flavour.
The photo was taken yesterday  at the delightful fishing village cum resort of Muxia where the temperature is  only in the high twenties but considered hot by the locals use to a cool wet maritime climate which has more in common with Ireland than sunny Spain.
But this is an area that has seen two huge disasters in the last 20 years.
The on with the biggest world exposure was the mammoth oil spill from the breakup at sea of the tanker 'Prestige' in 1993. It coated the coasts of Spain Portugal and France with a sticky slick. The clean-up is said to have cost €3b and for many years destroyed the coastal fishing industry. Today, it has recovered... and the seafood  is great.

The Prestige broke up at sea. The law courts are still trying to resolve the blame but part of it was that the tanker was blatantly unseaworthy, and none of the effected nations allowed the ailing vessel to enter a port to allow the spill to be properly contained.

And so the clean-up of a thousand kilometres of Coast using hundreds of volunteers from all over Europe was massive and costly. This photo was taken around the same point at Muxia where I took the photo.

But this is not Galacia's only type of disaster. The other is bushfire. Much of the traditional sheep and dairy land has been given over to plantation of eucalyptus hardwood and pine softwood. I was horrified to see the lack of firebeaks and trails and evidence that the countryside was only just recovering from bad fires of ten years ago. The experts are warning but, like the Prestige, the authorities are not taking preventative care. It will only take one hot summer in Galacia before another crisis occurs.

Galacia fire in 2006

The Camino to Muxia and Finisterre winds through a lot of eucalyptus forests

Other provinces are realising that the commercial tree selection is part of the problem and are trying to change where they can to the less combustible and easily managed native trees. But not in Galicia.

My Way: back from the edge

Fading light over the fishing port. The town does not see the glory of the Sunset in the West. Sensibly it nestles on Eastern side of the Cape away from the worst of the Atlantic weather.

¿Dónde están mis sardinas?

Not quite dead yet and so on, into the thriving touristy fishing port of Fisterra for a big seafood meal of octopus. I can afford it: lost six kilos in the last month and the albergue is charging me only €6 for my bunk and a shower.  Burp.
Then, in the fading light, a quiet life-affirming photo walk through the fishing boat haul-out yard.

My Way: even unto the end of the world

Thanks boots but it is time to die

The end of the Roman World

I walked to the end of the world today...well the Roman one anyway. Must have been a great place to retire from the army at the height of the Roman Empire's power. A long white beach, lush green forests plunging down iron cliffs to a dark blue Atlantic. And only a stones throw from the deep, watery abyss to where all souls went after death, off the Galician Costa da Morte.
I did the traditional thing at Cabo Fisterra, walking out below the lighthouse and leaving my boots. These were the boots that had seen me a thousand kms of prep and actual walking of the Camino from France; good boots that never gave me a blister but now breaking up and beyond repair.
I peeled them off at the blackened officially recognised fire pit below the stone cross. I placed them with a bunch of other people's offerings of clothing. No one spoke in the warm windless afternoon. Other pilgrims sat around on the bare rocky slope staring out into the misty azure where there was supposed to be the horizon. An Italian tourist understood exactly what I was doing and added some of her tissues to the insides of my boots so they would burn better when the time came.
I put on my shower sandals and slowly walked the hour back down the hill to the town.

My Way: Generalissimo Franco

Modern democratic Spain has an uneasy relationship with Franco, its former dictator. No monuments seem to have been built. Where I am now, the pilgrimage town of Carrión de los Condes, the marble Plaza sign that had honoured him as been painted over but the name still leaches though.

I read an anecdote about him that dated from his service commanding the Spanish foreign legion in Morroco before the coupe d'etat and civil war.
It is said that a soldier threw a bowl of soup in his face protesting the quality of the rations. Franco said nothing, wiped his face and continued his inspection. Afterwards he investigated the claim. The soldier had been right and so he arranged for the food to be improved. And he had the soldier shot for insubordination.
While Spain suffered under Franco, he bought them peace. He did not immediately send his troops to invade France from the south as Hitler and Mussolini had gone on their fateful rampage across Europe. When he did, it was a volunteer unit to the Eastern Front against the Communists. He did not irritate the UK or the USA. and so had bets both ways on the outcome. Until his death, Spain gradually improved, building a modern post colonial economy within its own borders.
Perhaps, like El Cid, the myth has yet to be written.

Posted from Lee Shipley's phone

My Way: contemplating a cathedral

Cathedrals are normally wasted on me. Too much of a severe Presbyterian shading into a Methodism upbringing. I still find it hard to see iconography as anything other than idolatry. And here, in the  nowhere have I seen such self-aggrandizing of the powerful like at the . Catedral de Burgos. I vowed to capture the visitors as you can find scores of pictures of the rest online.
I failed dismally in the contrasting dim land the brilliant shafts of light. It was made more made more difficult by having too many scruples about invading private moments.
But this place did impress for its sheer variety of artistic forms that the nobles of the area lavished generation after generation on this, the first and perhaps the finest Gothic style cathedral on the peninsular. Pity about the suffering in the fields around the town keeping lords like El Cid in the manner, and armor that they had become accustomed.

Posted from Lee Shipley's phone

My Way: time out

Across the finishing for many who wanted to get accommodation and eat before the mandatory afternoon siesta

Like rotten teeth, derelict buildings are simply removed and adjoining dwellings coated for protection.

The ho-hum incredibly intricate gold-leafed interior of Santa Maria. Grand organ performance leading up to a 7pm Mass attended by half a dozen locals and four pilgrims.

San Sebastian underground parking. Expensive way of standing still.

And now for something completely different.
Nancy calls. She is booked into a hotel in the North coast seaside city of San Sebastian. Hiring a car she is picking me up at my next halt, the declining but pleasant town of Los Arcos. Although only an hour and a half on the superb and lightly loaded A-19, the hire car people don't know where it is.
The contrast is extreme. At Los Arcos there are almost no vehicles on the twisty narrow streets lined with decaying three storey dwellings. The local dustman pushes a bicycle wheeled cart...but has little to do because and rubbish is carefully placed in the bins by locals and the stream of pilgrims.The massive church of Santa Maria dominates and the only show in town on Friday night appears to be Mass and a couple of friendly bars around the corner. San Sebastian, on the otherhand, is the crowded modern morass created by overcaterering for people who insist on moving by car.
I am dog-tired having walked over 20km in five hours picking up four plastic shopping bags full of rubbish along way. And that was with a full pack, food and two litres of water. The drive to the coast in a car with five-speed manual was pretty stressful, especially when I misread the signage and scored a trifecta of:
1. Driving down the wrong side of the road at a highway intersection.
2. Discovering that the green light on the facing corner in San Sebastian was not for me. Beep.
3. Going the wrong way on a one-way street. Beep, beep, bleep, beep-beep, big bus BEEP. Now, where is the reverse gear again? Beep. Oops, stalled in overdrive!. Big Bus not very happy because I am stationery in his stop. Footpath only alternative.
Never did an expensive 489 car underground carpark look so good.

Posted from Lee Shipley's phone