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

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. P

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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