Kim and Trev are on their way back to the US and Laurie and I are feeding one of our habits: Caminos. We did our first Camino to Santiago de Compostella in 2016 to kick off retirement—inspired by the movie The Way. Today we started our seventh Camino—the Camino Ingles. This is the route traditionally followed by the English and others from the British Isles, who traveled by ship to Spain. Pilgrims on the continent often started from their doorsteps in France, Germany, or even farther afield.
The Camino Ingles is a fairly short one. We will finish it in about six days. Our longest Caminos, the Chemin le Puy and Camino del Norte, took a combined 72 days. Not planning to repeat that.
We started this morning in the port city of Ferrol, the birthplace of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the dictator of Spain from 1938 to 1982. It was officially named El Ferrol del Caudillo during his rule. Caudillo is roughly equivalent to dictator or strongman. Today it is a peaceful city. We spent the night at a Spanish Parador, one of a chain of nice hotels started by Franco to boost tourism. The Parador in Ferrol is a former mansion. The important thing for us was the shower was nice and the breakfast was fabulous.
The biggest change from our recent hikes in England and Wales: fewer hills and no walking through pastures of sheep and cow dung. The smell of the forests of Western Australian Eucalyptus is also a nice change from the smell of the aforementioned livestock byproducts.
Today we noticed several public dog agility parks. I’ve seen private ones back home but these are public parks. The dogs seemed very excited to be on their way to or at these parks. Would be a nice thing for dogs back home.
On our way into the town where we are staying, we found a tunnel with some great murals by artists. Much better than the graffiti that seems more common in this region of Spain than where we traveled in England and Spain. Check out some examples below.
We also saw what appeared to be an animal rescue farm with donkeys and potbellied pigs. See the photo in the top gallery and in Laurie’s Relive video for more.
Click here or on the photo to the left to see the Relive video.