Leaving the Galician coast and heading into the mountains

Gord: Yesterday we had a short walk into Ribadeo to allow us the time to visit Cathedral Beach. This beach, located a dozen kilometres west of Ribadeo, is one of the premier tourist attractions in Galicia. We took a bus out, and we knew from a distance that we were approaching the beach because of the large number of parked vehicles. In the summer visitors to the beach are capped at 5000 per day. There were a fraction of that number when we were there, but it was still as fun to watch the other tourists as it was to see the natural features.

Cathedral Beach is a flat beach studded with stone islets and highlighted by a number of natural arches and sea caves. We couldn’t see some of the best known arches because the low tide wasn’t really that low, but it was still a pleasure to walk around barefoot in such a beautiful setting.

This morning we had a final view of the northern coast of Spain as we headed inland on the last 200 km section to Santiago.

Ruth: Today my timing was exceptional. I’m sitting in a rain shelter at a bar in a little town watching a passing downpour. Gord is not so lucky. I can track him on my iPad and he is about one km away. He will reach the bar just as the rain quits. So far the only thing getting me wet is the laundry I’m wearing. One of the benefits of being a human clothes line is staying nice and cool for the hill climbing. I’ve been rotating my clothes all morning, arriving at this bar in my latest combination of a skirt and my cycling top. We washed our clothes yesterday and the washing machine left them soaked and soapy. This morning they were still quite wet. Fortunately the human clothesline worked and I have dry and semi-clean clothes once again.