Campervan Therapy

The A6 motorway through the León, Cantabrian and Galician mountain ranges to the Atlantic Ocean’s Ria de Muros y Noia is stunning, starting with a rural idyll of rolling pastures, cow-bells tinkling and forested valleys, and becoming more dramatic past Ponferrada, when russet cliffs and mountains contrast with the verdant green forests. There’s miles and miles of pristine, almost empty country on either side of us.

I’ve wanted to see Galicia’s rias for years and the Ria de Muros does not disappoint, the AC543 hugs the coast in this deep estuary. The Atlantic bay is a violet blue, with white sandy inlets, craggy granite peaks poking out of ferns, heathers and gorse.

Granite houses and Galician granaries stud the hills. The slatted-stone granaries are balanced on top of elongated stone mushrooms, to allow air to circulate and keep the grain out of the reach of rats.

In the Present day, some are converted into narrow double beds to allow pilgrims for Santiago to sleep on the road because, yet again, we’re on the route to Santiago, this time it goes from Portugal up to the shrine.

We’re turned away from three full campsites and end up with the van stuck up an alley in a tiny hamlet behind Camping de San Francisco in Louro. A tour wouldn’t be a tour for us without being stuck up a mountain. We’ve had years of it. My cool-headed Chauffeur saves the day, yet again.

Seán checks his App Search for Sites and we park up at Larino Lighthouse’s unbelievably free camper-stop –  an idyllic spot by a walking trail that traces the bays and inlets. We’ve an ocean view of rock pools and boulders, mountains and valleys.

The sign says there’s space for eleven vehicles. We park up making it eighteen, each one of us on the lookout for a dedicated space. Early on Monday morning we manage to snaffle one, just as well as the local police arrive to move the excess campers on.

We stroll 2 kilometres through the sandy beach’s surf to the neighbouring bay where we sit and dream over coffee at the bar, children playing in rock-pools, a white sail out on the bluest bay – mornings don’t get much better than this.

In the afternoon we take the trail north out from the lighthouse which is now a boutique hotel.

The air by the track is scented with aniseed from the sea-fennel that rampages over the headlands.

Dry stone walls mark out impossibly narrow fields right up the sides of the inhospitable boulder-strewn mountains.

For a minute, I think I’m in the West of Ireland with the dry stone walls, the small fields, the ruins of old stone cabins, evidence of past emigration of the country’s children, except that here in Galicia it is 30 Celsius.

Joining the other sunset watchers, sat outside our van, we watch the sky and sea change to peach and gold and the distant headlands turn purple.

We feast at the local bar in Larino on squid, chips, falafel salad and local Padrón peppers, washed down with a glass of red for the princely sum of €24.