Janet, The Happy Wanderer: Farewell Asturias, hello Galicia

I'm now out of Asturias and well and truly into Galicia. I do like Asturias: its mountains, the way it oozes water, its square Horreos, and its quirkiness, so different to home. One day while walking on the outskirts of a village I saw a couple unloading a car, or the man was, while the woman was placing the boxes of plants in the vege patch. She was wearing clogs on her shoes which, which with their peg like stilts, kept her feet above the dirt.

The quirkiness even goes to the shell waymarks, which in this region are back to front to everywhere else in Spain. In Asturias we follow the closed part of the shell, but as soon as I crossed the bridge into Galicia the shells were inverted and now the open part of the shell points the way.

Galicia too has its individuality. This is the land of small farming. This is where farmers get out with a scythe to cut the grass, or go up market with a little petrol driven three wheeled "mower". The tractors are many and varied, out in force at this time of the year, working in the fields like busy insects. There are no air conditioned cabs in these tractors. In the fields you can see the farmers and their wives forking the grass onto large trailers with forks. As I've walked along the lanes these trailers have slowly passed me, either heading to the fields or back home. One evening I was passed by a man and his wife returning home. He was pushing a wheelbarrow loaded high with cut grass, while she, dressed in her " pinnie", carried the long fork. It is a common sight in the afternoon to see a woman, always wearing her "pinnie" and a head scarf, bent over working in the vege garden. They are oblivious to people like me walking past, intent on their work.

La Caridad.

Prior to the building of the bridge across the Rio Eo at the border of Asturias and Galicia, pilgrims of old had to walk upstream to the village of Castello and cross there. Now though, it is easy to cross, and of course shorter!