Thursday, January 25, 2007

Searching for Saint Sebastien - a weekend adventure

After nearly ten days in the same city my feet were starting to get itchy to travel some more, so I decided to go away for the weekend. I am looking to stay in Lugo until June or so depending how things go teaching a few hours at an English Academy, studying Spanish and living with a Spanish-British family helping two boys age six and eight practise their English. I found some guide books for Spain at the local library and started reading about the many curious and unusual festivals that are celebrated in Spain. According to the book January 20th was St. Sebastien day and he is the patron saint of the Galician city Ponteverda so I decided to go there in search of a fiesta. The city is a two and a half hour bus ride from the Lugo twisting and turning through the mountains. In Ponteverda as I walked from the bus station to the centre of the city I found myself on the Avenida da Peregrina and I started seeing the familiar scallop shells again. Ponteverda like Lugo is on a Camino to Santiago, the former the portuguese path and the latter the primitive path. Right now it seems like the camino is everywhere I go because I even found yellow arrows while passing through Madrid. It was strange thinking it is January because the streets in Ponteverda were lined with colourful Orange and Lemon trees mixed in with Palm trees. I was a little disappointed to learn at the tourism office that there were no festivities planned in Ponteverda for the next day, so I started to look into exploring the surrounding area.

I was told the town of Combarro was worth a visit and only six kilometres away, so with my new map in hand I walked accross the bridge and out of the city. One town followed another, so I didn´t really feel like I left the city at all and in about an hour or so I was walking on the beach. Combarro is quite small and what made it unique was along the water´s edge there was a row of Horréos, small granaries typical of Galicia and some intricate crucifixes. Because the tide was in the water came right up to the end of the streets in the old part of town and it felt a little like Venice. The first person I saw was a woman standing in the doorway of a tiny shop run out of her house. When I told her I was from Canada she told me that two Canadian families own appartments in the town and come and live there during the summer months. She also told me there was a pension further into the town next to what I understood was a landromat. When I got to the main square I saw some clothes hanging up to dry under a shelter that was built on a bit of a platform. When I got closer I saw below there was a stone wash basin that had a system of water running through it that seemed to come from a source further away in the mountains. Most people I´ve met in Spain seem to have washing machines, but despite the rain it is very rare to find a dryer.

In the morning I caught the bus to another town further up the coast called ´O Grove´ that was next to the island of A Toxa where according to my pamphlet on the region there was a chapel dedicated to San Sebastien. The island was attached to the town by a bridge, so I planned to walk there. It turned into a very strange experience because as I walked off the bridge the first thing I saw was a yellow building with tinted windows and sitting inside was a security guard. I was going to ask for directions, but he looked a little serious so instead I decided to stop and ask someone on the street. Part of my trip was to get away from being in a city and constantly walking beside car traffic and what was the next thing I saw, but a parking lot full of antique cars lined up for a car rally. Most people were really excited to see the cars and were taking lots of photos, but I just walked by. Just past the luxury hotel, Spa and Casino complex that seemed to be sponsoring the event I saw a small garden and the church. The entire building was covered in small pink scallop shells. As I walked up to take a closer look I read the name posted on a paper outside the chapel and it said San Martiño (which I imagine is St. Martin in English and definitely not St. Sebastien), so much for the fiesta. I looked at the photo and then at the church and they were exactly the same, minus a few tourists so it had to be an error on the pamphlet. It´s all part of the adventure and discovering more of Galicia. It was a pretty little island, so I continued my walk around it. Not long after I walked past a sports complex and a golf course (the second I have seen in Spain). This was when I started being followed by a yellow security car driving very slowly just under the pace I was walking. To my left was a small forest area that seemed to be closed up and to my right was a walled off housing complex. There were big signs informing me that it was private property. I saw the bridge ahead and decided to leave because I didn´t really enjoy feeling stalked by the security presence.

I wandered around O Grove a bit and then decided to check back in at Ponteverda for any signs of a fiesta. No fiesta, but the same car rally I had seen in the morning seemed to have followed me and cars filled the pedestrian streets. At this point I debated going back to Lugo, but on my map I saw there were more towns to the South and in the bus station there seemed to be quite a few postcards from the town of Marin. I kind of wished I had been travelling with someone else and not always my own, but hopefully it won´t take long to get to know more people in Lugo. The big attraction in Marin seemed to be the walk along the port and I won´t lie that what I found more interesting was the walk alongside the Naval training school seeing the Spanish sailors in uniform.

The next morning I found what I was looking for which was a peaceful trail alongside the ocean without many cars. A couple kilometres out of Marin I read there were some petrogliphs on Mogor beach so I headed there. I was a little disappointed that when I crossed paths with people out walking their dogs that my ´Buenos Dias´ greetings were ignored and that generally as I approached people they looked away. The Galician character is a little bit strange that way and I don´t really understand it. In a lot of ways the countryside and the culture are quite similar to Ireland, but the people can be at times very reserved.

Back in Lugo reading the newspaper I found out that there was a festival of interest for St. Sebastien in a town called Cangas which is in fact not far from Pontevedra, so I guess I will know for next time...

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