_Thumbnail.JPG) | 5 and 6.09.08 Saturday.
Finisterre.
We have been walking towards the end of the known world now for two days, pathetic fallacy cut in as we arrived on the camp site in Estorde, nearly at Finisterre. We have elected to transfer our base to this remote part of Galicia and to walk on a daily basis until we reach the point of land most westerly in the known world. The problem is that it isn’t! Looking at the map today we realised that Lisbon in Portugal is at least as far westerly as the Capo Finisterre owing to the magic of Mercator’s projection and the position of the north pole re latitude and longitude, although grid lines on some Spanish maps help continue the myth of the Finisterre.
The countryside through which we walk is typical west of Ireland; there is gorse and broom and heather. It is green, and as we know you don’t get green without rain. The night before last and yesterday were dominated by a small deep depression that formed off the coast, and a gale and wind equal to any in the western Scottish Isles.
We survived and are now about halfway between Santiago and Finisterre. Our pace has slowed as we now are accompanied, but allows appreciation of some more sedentary values. On stopping yesterday for mid morning coffee at a tiny bar in the middle of nowhere we were pressed to accept a slug of (probably rum) in our coffee, “for the taste, and the journey”, such is hospitality still in the remote parts of the Way.
The land is very rural, farms and small hamlets only. A sculpture in Negreira depicts a Galician family with the father leaving to find work, but his feet are the roots of a tree. Echoes of Scotland, Ireland and other Western Celtic lands are all around, only the ever present alien Eucalyptus tree and the huge wind farms with their turbines strike a strange note, the mists, damp, and wind are familiar.
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