Santiago to A Coruña

This morning, the last of our little group left Santiago - Klara caught her flight to the Czech Republic, Maylin left on her 30 hour bus journey to Germany, and we hopped on the train for a thirty minute trip to A Coruña. We are glad we’ll be back in Santiago one last day in a week’s time, but it’s always hard to say goodbye. Stanley Kunitz’s poem, ‘The Layers’ asks ‘how shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?’, and I was thinking of that this morning. It’s a privilege even to be able to experience leaving this place as one of our losses, but there’s always the question how many times we might be back. 

For now, though, we move into the next stage of our adventure - the beginning of the Camino Ingles. We’ve come first to A Coruña, by means of the incredibly efficient and comfortable Spanish train system. 

A Coruña is one of the two traditional starting points for the Camino Ingles, and although we will be starting from Ferrol which gives us a couple of extra days walking, we decided to spend one night here on our way. As is often the case in these cities, there’s quite a large new town surrounding the old. We are in a small Pension more or less on the border between the two. The main plaza is massive - these are the mayoral offices!

The Plaza is dedicated to Maria Pita, a Galician heroine famous for defending A Coruña against British invasion in the 16th century and inspiring the other women of the city to fight. Here she is in full cry!

Just through one of the gates from this Plaza into the old city is the Iglesia  Santiago. It’s a beautiful 12th century Romanesque building and considerably simpler, outside and in, than many Spanish churches.

Here is this church’s very endearing version of St James. We were able to get a stamp to mark the beginning of this Camino, as well as meditate for a short time until the church closed and we had to leave!

After we’d got our accommodation organised (alas, no albergue in this town), we made our way to the beach and enjoyed dipping our feet in the Atlantic.







It was a warm, sunny afternoon and we walked around the lightly populated beach - people happily sun baking and swimming.

 There was even a mermaid.

And then on around to the Torre de Hercules - a 2nd century lighthouse which is the oldest Roman lighthouse in use today.

We couldn’t quite work out this feature - a bit like a labyrinth, but it leads to some dead ends, so not really.

And then, as we made our way back into town for evening, we passed these boys playing soccer in the park. 

Tomorrow we catch a bus (we think) to Ferrol and will walk our first stage of this route - a short one to begin, 15 km. So now we are relatively early to bed, after a lovely light supper of Caldo Gallega (Galician bean, potato and silver beet soup) and a serving of coffee mousse. That should give our legs strength for the way!

Buen Camino,

Sarah and Neil