We woke up this morning to more rain making forays between showers for dog walking and tank emptying so we could get on the road. The weather forecast suggests we are not the only ones. The large blue low pressure zone extends most of the way across Spain and northern Portugal with Madrid 5 degrees cooler than London today. However, on the plus side, it looks like it should clear up in the next day or so.
So, the best thing to do when it is raining seems to be to drive a bit more. So we set off for Ille de Arousa, which looked like a promising small island off the coast, connected by a bridge with a large fishing fleet and aquaculture, promising seafood delights. We followed the slow road there to view the local countryside. We wound our way up and downhill over a steady 2 hour drive around the inlets of the peninsular. It was again surprising thick woodland with barely a break in the trees except for the small villages and towns for the majority of the journey. We also passed many more “sheds on stilts” also known as Hórreo which we first observed in the Picos de Europa. These are in fact granary’s, to store grain on stilts to prevent rodents. Some older villages seemed to have them at nearly every house. They are apparently something common to this Iberian peninsular down to Northern Portugal.
We passed over the bridge onto Illa de Arousa with high expectations and easily found the first potential park up spot just off the bridge on the other side. Although there was free overnight parking there were no other campers parked up. It was quite a way out of town and we would have had to cycle in, so we thought we would have a drive around to investigate. The second potential spot was a campsite a little further in, here the gates were bolted with a notice to call a number. However, again no one else parked up and the ground looked sodden. Finally, third time lucky we went to a park up spot on the quay right in the middle of town. Again no one parked up and everything looked very quiet even though it was the middle of the lunch 2 hours. We concluded that like the islands we visited in France off season, that this was another seaside tourist type location which was obviously pretty deserted off season without enough local trade to keep restaurants etc going. There is also a bit of a risk of break ins etc if you are parked up alone, so we decided as we have wheels we would travel. Well, after a quick stop to make some lunch.
We quickly plan a re-route to Sanxenxo to a campsite near the beach. Another 30mins and we are there. Little did we realise that one route we would be passing through the home of our favourite local wine Albariño at Cambados. A fairly small area packed with vines grown unusually on frames above the ground. Very different to any wine regions we have seen elsewhere.
Once we got to the campsite we waited for the rain to clear before a walk along the beach and exploration into Sanxenxo
In for a Penney 