The Road from Santiago

  We aren’t actually going into Portomarin but I think it is worth a mention. A settlement grew up by a Roman bridge. In 1212 the Order of St John took charge of the town. In the 1960s the authorities decided to damn the river and flood the town. The old town was flooded. The church of Saint John was rebuilt in the centre of the new town.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_San_Xo%C3%A1n,_Portomar%C3%ADn On up the hill - and we are going up 230m - we have one of those ghost moments, One click the fabrica de landrillos seems up and running, the next it is abandoned. I have tried tracking down what happened and have got as far as a notice that the firm is closed from November 2016. On a more cheerful note we are passing by a Galacian horreo. These splendid granaries, raised on stone pillars to avoid the attentions of vermin, were one of the first and striking things I remember when we landed in Spain and were driving to Compostela. I do rather fancy one of the Asturian ver...

  We are doing another day of dodging on and off streetview. This may vex but what should delight is that we have a vending machine to review. The machine is in Moimentos and has had 11 reviews. Eugene gives one of the lowest rating. ‘I finally found a place where I could take a rest and get stamps inside. -renew- Originally it was five stars, but then I noticed there were flies in the coffee and had to give it three stars…’ Parrocha has a whole restaurant. It is described as LGBTQ+ friendly and Brandon Fuentes reports 5 stars. ‘I loved stopping here. The staff were very nice helped me a great deal when I needed a break on the Camino. We talked and swapped stories about Hamburgers, and Route 66!’ Brandon uses the image from the cover of Hobbe’s Leviathan for his icon. Alas, he has written 5 reviews, but the other four are not on his profile. We end the day descending into the valley of the Minho. This River is not the Minho which is the longest one in Jamaica but 340km affair which...

We are on another day of tiny hamlets. What makes this different is we leave the main road and follow a way which sometime squeezes between two halves of a farm and so get a decent amount of views, uninterrupted by business opportunities. There is a business for us to go passed. The ‘Rural o Urbano’ is a women owned LGBTQ+ friendly e-commerce centre.   https://ruralourbano.com/   Among the many things they have to offer is a esparto burrito head for 24 euros, a wooden magic wand for 7.25 and a Vineyard arma soy candle for 15 euros. Tudor fans might want a copy of ‘Maria Pita and the Pirate’. A brave story of how the plucky lass from A Courna who saw off the foul English in 1589.   https://ruralourbano.com/producto/cuento-maria-pita-y-el-pirata-estefania-padulles/ We’ve got sometime. Lets talk Galician. About 2.4 million people have some sort of competence in it. Mostly this is within Galicia and its border zones. Migrants have also taken it to Latin and North America. Mod...