Spain – Coruña – Ferrol – Part II (En)

On Saturday Alicia picked us up in the motorhome and we went to see a village called San Andrés de Teixido, the most important pilgrimage centre in Galicia after Santiago de Compostela. On our way there we stopped at a lookout to see the views as to get to the village you have to go up a cliff then go down.

San Andrés de Teixido is a village that hardly reaches 50 inhabitants and the legend says that if you don’t go there alive then you will do it dead, wandering like a lost soul, and Alicia says they transformed into an animal. The village is amazing and for me one of the most beautiful towns in Spain, the houses are made of stone in a marine style, the church of San Andrés has a striking white facade and inside many of the pilgrims leave their votive offerings, wax offerings in the shape of legs, arms or the part of the body that needs to be healed. There are also baby coffins inside of babies sick to be healed. There are many stands selling these offerings and other typical products such as dolls made of bread. Alicia and I bought luck turtles.

The village has really cute bars where they serve barnacles, a half kilo 15 euros! They are normally really expensive so of course, we ate a half kilo as since Ben tried them in Portugal he loves them!

Then we went to see the church inside where we saw a baby coffin hanging on the wall and the Do Santo fountain called also the fountain of the three spouts. The legend says that you have to make a request to San Andres, then drink the water from the three pipes (but you shouldn’t swallow it, it seems that it is not drinkable) and throw a crumb of bread into the fountain, if it floats the saint will attend the request. Alicia told us that we have to drink from the three pipes so Ben did it and then we realised that the water is not drinkable! Ben’s face was a picture, he said he will die but not come back as an insect hahaha.

Then Alicia took us to see the Vixia de Herbeira the fourth highest height in Europe and in the highest point and right on the edge of the cliff stands the Herbeira sentry box. It is an old stone construction originally built in the 18th century and was part of a series of coastal and maritime surveillance posts along the coast.

And from there we went to a town called Cedeira, its harbour is famous due to the seafood found on its beaches. Alicia and I went for a swim at the beach and Ben wait for us with Asha having a drink in a bar where we all had a drink. Then we went to see the town looking for a restaurant open so we could eat something as we ate only the barnacles and we were getting pretty drunk. Finally, at 8.30 pm we had dinner and we shared berberechos (cockles) super yummy, croquettes of ink squid (really good) and raxo in black beer.

We finished the day in Alicia’s house so Ben and I could shower and we met Maciek, Alicia’s husband, Nico (their son) and Bolek their dog. We had an amazing time, chatting and drinking and eating cheese and chorizo, and we finished pretty drunk and late. Then Alicia and Nico took us to our motorhome so Nico could see it and he liked it a lot.

Thank you very much to Alicia and her family, we had an amazing time and saw amazing places. We hope to see you all soon, even when Ben was really hungover on Sunday hahaha. And now we are on a beach in a place called Gondreo, and you can see it in the next post.