I am not sure that there is a much better title for this one as we have been meandering our way along the coast and although we have mostly been lucky with the weather over the last week, the days when we haven’t been have really made up for it…..

After leaving Cudillero we thought we would stop at a couple of small coastal towns to have a look round whilst the sun was still shining.  Unfortunately, not all coastal towns are built for motorhomes and we ended up driving all the way through and out the other side of Luarca, unable to find anywhere to stop.  We were however slightly luckier with our next port of call, Tapia de Casariego, a small fishing village with not much else except waves to attract surfers and a lovely Aire to park the motorhome in … what a lovely place for lunch 🙂

After lunch we headed on to Foz which is another sleepy coastal town with lots of walking along the seafront and river, a handful of bars and a place to sleep with stunning views…..

As the sun was going down we were joined by another English couple (Peter and Di) and their Jack Russell -Taylor, who are on their way back home having spent the last three months travelling through Spain, Portugal and Italy. It is always great to meet other people who are as motivated by food and wine as we are, so much so that they feel the need to cycle up any mountain that happens to be within a ten mile radius 🙂  Only joking, Peter and Di are slightly more serious cyclists than we are (professionals vs tourists), both on and off road, but they share the same enthusiasm and sense of adventure that we have to experience new things. It was great to share travelling stories both within Europe and further afield and a shame to part ways after two nights. I was impressed by Di’s optimism wearing shorts whilst the clouds were looming over head, but hope that the weather was better for them heading East to Gijon and then up into the Picos, than it was for us going West.

We had been told that the tallest cliffs in Europe were not too far and the route was stunning – unfortunately, we will have to take the tourist offices’ word for it, as it started to rain really heavily just before mid-day on Saturday and didn’t stop until 4pm on Sunday. It was odd, as although we were fairly low, so were the clouds and it felt like we were travelling through mountain villages rather than seaside towns. On the rare occasion during the journey when the cloud lifted we spotted what would be some beautiful places, Porto de Baqueiro being the one that shone through the rain more than anywhere else – it was so beautiful, we agreed that we would come back when the weather is slightly better. We perservered and carried on to Carino (which is near the cliffs we had been aiming for), had a walk around and couldn’t see the sea at the end of the beach, let alone anything else so headed back to the motorhome and battened down the hatches as we were soaked.

Waking to more rain, we contemplated hanging around to see if it dried out enough for us to be able to take in some of the sights, but decided to head to A Coruna where if nothing else we could spend the afternoon in a nice restaurant 🙂

A Coruna is a big city with a lot of coast. It is shaped like a hammer head and there has been a lot of money invested in maintaining the promenades which is great if you are into walking, running or cycling. To give you an idea of distance, we stayed by the Hercules tower on the first night which is right in the center of the top of the ‘hammer head’, and moved to the left hand bottom end of the hammer for our second night which was just over 6kms …all with lovely crashing waves 🙂 – oddly, it doesn’t feel like a big city, perhaps it is the sea!

We were only in A Coruna to pick up my GPS running watch which I had to send back to Polar as it was broken and this was the closest distributor they could send it back to – so watch in hand we set off to Fisterra and ‘Cabo Finisterre’- the most Westerly point of Europe – before the weather breaks again.

Fisterra is a small fishing village which has been supplemented by tourism due to the Cabo Finisterre only being 3.5km away. We parked up close to the fishing port which is roughly what the ‘Aire’ information said, but it doesn’t look quite right so will wait and see if we get a knock in the door in the night to move us on.

We then set off for a wander to the end of Europe….

Not really a lot to say, a few people had left their walking boots after finishing the Finisterre part of the Santiago del Compestello path, others had left padlocks or pieces of clothing …. I am not quite sure what we were expecting – It’s a bit like when we crossed the equator for the first time in South America with my parents in 1987 and suddenly in the middle of nowhere on a dirt track (which was the pan-american highway) there was a monument – to be fair at least here in Fisterra, there was a lighthouse with some massive horns (for making noise … not spearing things)

The countryside around here is beautiful as it has the great combination of rough sea, sandy beaches and rolling hills (some may even be little mountains at a stretch!)