Friday 29th August, 42° 25’.69 N, 008° 41’.98 W Combarro

Last time I wrote enthusiastically about the joys of staying put in Finisterre. Be careful what you wish for, as it may come true … We stayed put a whole week at our next stop, Muros, and although it was a pretty enough place, our inactivity wasn’t through choice. As we sailed into the bay, after a great sail down from Finisterre, we realised that there was no water coming out of the engine exhaust, which means no cooling water going round the engine: in short, bad news.

The next week could be read as a long saga of frustration: trips to the mechanics, promises that the pump would be looked at tomorrow, tomorrow never coming, finally a great deal of expense and a temporary solution which got us on the move again, but with no resolution of the underlying problem.

Better to treat it, and remember it, as an enforced “holiday”, where we sat in bars and restaurants and cafés to watch the world go by, ate vast quantities of seafood, got the blog up and running, went to Santiago de Compostela. In the end found we barely had enough time for everything we’d meant to do.

The map from the tourist office showed a “lavadoiros” and as some washing had built up to we set out to investigate. A public washing place, yes, but with forty or so stone basins fed by a spring, led along a concrete irrigation channel! It was still very much in use, judging by the lines of clothes around the perimeter. Being over-civilized souls, and believing in the merits of hot water for washing, we set off instead in the rib to the village of Portosin, across the ria, balancing on three bin-liners full of sweaty clothes and bedding.

We are eating so well! Quantities of fruit – how nice to be in a country where almost all the fruit is grown locally. The nearest we have come to a ready meal is a pot of fruit-flavoured yoghourt. Our favourite restaurant in Muros described itself as a Pulperia – an octopussery? Pulpo alla Gallego are pounded to make them tender, simmered and served in red wine, with olive oil and paprika. Delicious! Then there are the deep-fried squid with their crispy purple-red tentacles, the plates of sardines (of a size which means that no tin could take them), the mejillones (mussels), the almejas (clams), and always the possibility of a little tarta de queso (cheesecake) for postres. For elevenses and breakfast, the pastelerias provide sweet pastries, including old-fashioned cream puffs that explode with crumbs of flaky pastry and spurts of cream at the first bite. The fishing catch is sold in an impromptu market every afternoon. On our last evening in Muros we took back a bag of langoustines, simmered them quickly, then fried them in a little garlic butter to crisp them up.

We are muscling up a bit with all the hauling on ropes – in my case just getting rid of the worst of the desk-bound flabbiness, but Anthony is becoming quite rrrrippling with muscle. He has celebrated this by getting out a T shirt he must have bought in the 70s, cream with thin navy blue horizontal stripes, and navy blue buttons on the shoulder seam. With his tan – he is now so black it just looks as if he’s forgotten to wash – he looks like a thorough-going native of Marseilles.

One day we took a bus to Santiago de Compostela. By the roadside there were many little stone buildings, standing on saddle stones, about 12’ by 3’, with ventilated walls, and a small spire, and often a cross, at both ends. There were no obvious ladders or steps leading up to the small doors in the side. We puzzled what they might be. They had the immediate air of being family mausoleums, but almost every house seemed to have one, often right outside the back door, and there was washing hanging under several of them … hen houses? Places for the jamón to dry in safety? Stores for winter clothes? Privies?

Our destination, Santiago, is the city where the apostle St James is supposed to be buried and is a place of pilgrimage for thousands of people by foot, on horseback and bicycle every year. The front of the cathedral has a Gothic face and the high altar is covered in gold coloured carvings and is extremely ornate – rather over-elaborate for our taste and not quite in keeping with the very simple life that Jesus and his apostles lived.

Santiago has a lovely collection of squares with fountains - one with a bust of an etiolated 16th century face, pointed beard and ruff. To English eyes, especially those which have recently been in Plymouth, the obvious description was Frances Drake - most unlikely though on this bit of the Spanish coast. It was Cervantes.

We had a wonderful lotus eating time in Muros, and really slowed down to the local pace of life. It reminds me of the following story - with apologies to anybody who´s heard it before, and to my former colleagues


The management consultant and the fisherman

Not so long ago, a management consultant took a holiday in a small Spanish fishing village.

In between fielding messages of great importance on his blackberry, and working up a couple of business plans for developing the village with a marina and high-end leisure complex, he practised his Spanish on Pedro, a local fisherman. Pedro took his fishing boat out in the morning, and busied himself around the bay, checking his pots for lobsters, trawling his nets for cod and hake, and visiting his vivero to haul up ropes of mussels. He returned around midday to sell his catch, then took what was left home to his family. At around 5 in the evening he would saunter back into the plaza, and pass the rest of the day chatting with passing friends, over a beer if he was in funds, or just sitting by the fountain if the fish had been scarce.

The management consultant found Pedro’s lifestyle deeply disturbing, and he worried for the future of this amiable man, who, although well into his 40s, appeared to have no capital, no savings, nothing to protect him against the vagaries of the world. As the week went on, he abandoned his musings on how to make money out of the village, and devoted his energies to planning a better future for Pedro. He made several phone calls to colleagues, researched EU and regional grants, and sat in the plaza working diligently on his laptop.

The day he was due to return in body to the job which he had barely left in spirit, he went to see Pedro, and gave him the fruits of his efforts.

“My friend” he began. “I would like to make you a free gift. It really upsets me to see you sub-optimising your wealth accretion opportunities in such a way. Although I normally charge my time at €500 an hour, I would like to make you a present of some of my valuable consulting experience, gained with some of the largest corporations on this earth. I believe you and your family deserve a better life, and I wish to be the person who facilitates the ascension of your family through the socio-economic grades.

Pedro listened politely.

“I started with a piece of diagnostic work. I think we can agree that the career you have chosen for yourself can be described, using the EU standard descriptors, as “fishing and ancillary trades”. Pedro nodded. “I have reviewed your pattern of activity, and have noted that you spend on average 3.25 hours every day at your chosen work. Research at our head office in Santa Clara has devised a matrix of basic minima for non-work items, which should ensure the continuing maximisation of productivity. I have applied these to you career, age and personal fitness levels (which are, by the way, quite superior), and the model gives you 6 hours a day for sleep, 0.5 hours for self-maintenance (including meals) and 1.5 hours for personal interactions (which may also include meals). This means that there are a further 12.75 hours during which you can work, every single day!” He clearly regarded this as a conclusion that would delight Pedro.

“So, you are asking yourself, what should you do with this extra time, that, balancing risk with likely outcome, and while preserving the unique aspects of your chosen career, will maximise the life-time earnings potential, and enable the construction of a solidly-backed wealth portfolio to transmit in a tax-efficient fashion along an inter-generational path?” Pedro nodded, thoughtfully. The question, certainly, was not one he had posed himself before that day.

“This is the strategy I have devised for you!” He started to pull print-outs from the folder under his arm, and lay them down on the stone bench on which Pedro was sitting. Flow charts followed, time-lines, balance sheets, colourful presentations embellished with pictures of sacks of gold and stick men dancing with joy. It took him several minutes to explain the full plan: the additional fleet of Panamanian-registered fishing boats, the tuna canning factory financed by the regional government, the refrigerated lorries, the hitherto unexploited market niches and marketing angles. A few of the pages threatened to blow away, and he anchored them with pebbles from the beach as he orchestrated their story, conjuring, conducting, weaving his vision of the vast and profitable commercial empire.

“And now”, he said, “we get to the best bit!” He held up a piece of paper with just one number on it, in a large, golden font. “2033!” “This is the point at which we realise the wealth you have created over the previous twenty five years. We will by that time have several options, but if my predictions for the mid-century evolution of the fast-to-consumer high value-add fish-product market are correct, we should be looking at …” he plunged into a jumble of financial details, and further spreadsheets flew out of his folder for Pedro’s inspection.

The consultant paused. “So, my friend, you will be rich! You will be the richest man, not just in this village, but in the province. Imagine that!” He moved to the killer arguments. “What would you do then? Imagine the sort of life you could lead! Once you’d got the buy-out in the bag you could slow down at work, find someone to take over the running of the business for you, delegate some routine stuff. You could have a little time for yourself, take up a hobby, perhaps go fishing a bit, spend some quality time with your family - why you’d only need to work a few hours every d …” He tailed off, and stood silent.

The sun sparkled on the harbour. A few waves lapped on the slipway. A gull squawked overhead, and the little breeze picked up several of the spreadsheets and scattered them over the gorse bushes around the harbour. Pedro smiled.


Anybody who wants to reply with La Fontaine’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper is most welcome!

When we finally left Muros, we headed into Sanxenxo, a town in the Ria de Pontevedra, whose proximity to the motorway network has built it up into a flourishing holiday resort. The engineers there were most friendly and interested in our problem – in the end, we had father, son and cousin all sitting down looking at the worn out pieces – but without the resources to help us. They did, however, recommend another marina in Vigo, in the next ria. Sanxenxo also provided copious hot showers … Tomia has got a shower, but we always have to be careful with the water, and a shower is a quick burst of water, soaping, and another quick burst to rinse. It is bliss, just every couple of weeks, to stand under a shower that is blasting out water as hot as you want, for as long as you want. The third star in Sanxenxo’s crown is an heladeria selling grapefruit-and-rose flavoured sorbet!

From Sanxenxo we came to Combarro, towards the head of the ria. A ridiculously charming village, whose old part has been fully restored without losing its character. At the minute it is poised safely on this side of the line between quaint and cute, but a new marina is just being built (the diesel pumps are still in their bubble wrap!) so perhaps the souvenir shops are not far behind. A sequence of little stone-built fish restaurants and taperia line the harbour. Great walls of purple bougainvillea cascade down, and there were several trees whose names I don’t know, with foot-long yellow trumpets hanging down, smelling heavily and sweetly in the evening air.


On Friday we took the rib right up the ria, beyond where yachts can navigate, to the provincial capital of Pontevedra. The red port-hand marks on the stone piers that mark the channel appear to be made of terracotta piping – a very practical idea. As usual, every navigational mark has been colonised by gulls and cormorants, who find them an excellent vantage point for spotting fish or drying out wings. The old centre of the town, like Combarro’s, has been preserved intact, with modern buildings in a ring all round, but almost none in the centre itself.

The main product of the town seems to be bars and cafés; at least one in every one of the many pleasant squares. 3€ gets us a beer, a cup of coffee, a large bowl of nuts, access to several papers, and the opportunity to sit for as long as we want admiring the view. The protestant work ethic is bound to kick in again before too long, but I’m enjoying being without it, just for a while.

I am looking forward to the approaching end of August, which means all the sales will stop. I have never seen so many windows full of enticing shoes – and have no excuse to buy a single frivolous pair.

love to all