Finisterre

The Shell Thief

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Pensión Doña Lubina, Fisterra. 21.20.

First Dates is on TV. I can never find the equivalent in the UK, but in Spain it seems like it’s always on. Tonight’s couples include a pensioner from Sevilla, a rocker in his fifties and a Colombian male model whose dealbreakers in a would-be partner include the term “vergón”. Spanish TV, like Spanish music, certainly doesn’t deal in subtlety.

I woke up around six this morning to the sound of the waves breaking on the shore outside – the same gentle woosh that I can hear as I write.

The sun crested the jagged bluff of Monte Pindo shortly after 8.15, so I slipped down to the beach to catch the light. A couple of dog walkers were out and about and a single pilgrim sat reading in the dunes, but otherwise the long curved bay of Playa Langosteira was empty. The tide had come in during the night, leaving a breadcrumb trail of seashells all along the tidal maximum. A beautiful sight, to be sure.

Or, at least, it should have been. Only, the only shells left on the beach were broken. It looked as though the sea had kept the best ones to itself and spat out the rest. As it turns out, the truth wasn’t far off.

A barefoot pilgrim stood a hundred metres or so ahead of me, turning something over in her hand. Satisfied with whatever it was, she moved further along the beach, stopped, and stooped to pick something up. Clearly, she was looking for seashells. She must have repeated the exercise about eight or nine times before I overtook her. I didn’t turn to see if she had more to find, but I did catch a glimpse of a large collection of seashells in the crook of her arm as I passed.

I’m not really one for calling people out. Anyone who knows me even in passing will know the last thing I ever want to do is to risk upsetting anyone, even when the matter seems ridiculously trivial. It’s a people-pleasing tendency of mine that I’ve never been particularly good at quashing. However, if there’s a line in the sand, it’s when I see someone doing something that threatens the natural world in some way. And this definitely constitutes a transgression in my book.

Before you think me a busybody, I feel I need to point out that this isn’t just high-handedness on my part. The law is on my side here. In 2017, faced with a surge in tourists in coastal areas (still a major problem today), the Spanish government passed the Ley de costas, which – to the official letter of the law – “forbids the extraction of any element of the public littoral domain, such as sand, shells or stones”. This makes it illegal to beach-comb in any part of the Spanish territory, from Galicia and the Costa Brava to the Balearics and the Canary Islands. Period.

If my experience of this country and its people is anything to go by, I’d be surprised if the Spanish police actually enforce this law, but the consequences of falling foul of it can be severe: the fines for collecting seashells range from 500 to 3,000 euros. The Mediterranean island of Sardinia is even stricter: taking large quantities of sand from its famous beaches can lead to a prison sentence.

There’s a very good reason for all of this. It’s easy to say that if we all took five or six shells from the beach on our holidays, soon there’d be nothing left to take. But there’s more to it than that.

Seashells are a fundamental part of the littoral ecosystem. The continual pounding of the waves eventually grinds them into fragments – the same fragments that make up the sand beneath your feet. In a way, your average beach is actually an enormous marine graveyard. Without the shells, there’d be less sand to go around, seriously threatening the thousands of creatures that make their home in the littoral zone and the birds that rely on them as a food source.

Discarded shells serve a second purpose. Nothing goes to waste in the ocean. Besides the obvious hermit crabs, who literally depend upon seashells to survive, an abandoned shell provides a much-needed shelter for smaller creatures like shrimps and fish fry, who use these temporary refuges until they are large enough to avoid some of their former predators, as well as a holdfast for barnacles, limpets and chitons. Larger shells may even harbour an octopus, a creature perfectly adapted to squeezing into the most awkward of spots to escape from predators.

Which they definitely need to do on the regular in these waters, given the Galician obsession with octopus as a delicacy.

Sorry… I got up on my pulpit there. In truth, I was mulling all of this over in my head as I read a signboard by the beach exit which detailed some of the above, while the beachcombing pilgrim stood washing every single shell she’d collected under the outdoor shower. I didn’t want to challenge her, but I couldn’t just let her take all those shells away. She laid them out in three rows along the wall as she washed them. She must have amassed around thirty in all, from scallops to periwinkles and everything in between.

When it looked like she had finished with the ablutions, I got her attention and told her politely to take one if she had to, but to leave the rest behind. She looked confused. I repeated myself in Spanish, but that didn’t seem to work either. She looked like she might have been Thai or Malay, so Spanish wouldn’t have been much use. I tried French. I pointed at the sign and tried to indicate that taking the shells was wrong – not that it would have done much good, as the sign was in Galician and Spanish and faded in places due to the ravages of sun, sand and surf, and thus presumably illegible to the average tourist. Nothing.

I even tried mimicking handcuffs and paying a fine. She just stared at me and held out one of her shells for me to take, presumably thinking I wanted one. I shook my head and said “illegal” a couple of times. She said “OK” and wandered off. I didn’t see where she went, or if she left the shells behind. She didn’t return to the beach, at any rate.

When I was a kid I got walloped for trying to stop a couple of older boys from stealing a frog. They had caught one in a bucket and were taking it away to put in their garden. In a fit of fury I still can’t explain, I snatched the bucket and legged it to the river to release the creature. I was pushed into the water for my insolence and given a couple of kicks for good measure, but I had achieved what I set out to do: the frog got away.

Was it my place to give that girl a ticking off? Probably not. But we have to stand up for the things we believe in. Without principles, we are merely waiting out our time on this earth. Our core beliefs give us grounding, a rock to stand on, which no wind or waves or wickedness can wear away.

I’ve got back onto the pulpit again. I’d better get off before I end up considering a career in the clergy. BB x

At the End of the World

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

Cape Finisterre, 20.11.

Galicia provides. Happiness writes white but the white light is brilliant, like the sands that run along the length of the bay beneath my window. Like the feathers of the gannets and terns that dance above the face of the water. Like the sparkling reflection of the sun as it sinks below the horizon along the 42nd parallel north, disappearing beyond the Atlantic, beyond Chicago, beyond the end of the world.

Madrid feels a world away. I caught the early AVLO train from Chamartín and joined a modest number of passengers on the three hour journey to Spain’s north-westernmost region. The railway line tunnels under the snowy peaks of the Guadarrama before racing across the featureless plains of Zamora and then, slowly, climbing into the wooded hills and craggy moors west of Astorga before rolling through the deep valleys of Galicia proper. Spain is one of those countries that alters radically as you travel through it, and the Madrid-A Coruña train is a very good way to prove that point.

I arrived in Santiago de Compostela with a couple of hours to kill before the bus to Fisterra, so I wandered into town and sat in the main square in front of the cathedral for a while. A few school groups posed noisily in front of the cathedral, while exhausted pilgrims sat at the feet of the pillars, soaking up the sunlight to recharge their batteries. There aren’t as many now as there were during the summer. I guess that’s to be expected. The year I made the trek, 2023, was also a delayed holy year, the first since the COVID-19 pandemic shut the Camino down, so the numbers were especially high.

I wonder how far these bold pilgrims had come this year. What friends did they make on their journey? What memories will they take away with them forever? Did somebody watching from the sidelines wonder that about me, years ago?

The bus from Santiago to Fisterra is almost as long as the train from Madrid, but it does travel along one of the most scenic routes in the whole country. To reach the famous cape, it first has to pass through all the towns and villages along the coast, fording the great rías that weave through the cliffs on their way to the sea. The sun came out from behind the clouds just as the cape came into sight, and the whole coast seemed to come to life: the yellow flowers of the gorse shone like gold, the sand beneath the shallows glittered like jade. My heart did a similar leap once when I saw the silhouette of Olvera, my old hometown, for the first time in seven years. It made me smile to think that this place had joined that pantheon.

I arrived early, so I went down to the beach to soak up the sea air for a while. Fisterra is so special to me because it combines the two sides of my heart: the sounds and smells of the sea from my childhood in England, and the language, cliffs and mountains of my adult love for Spain. Mountains take my breath away (especially the craggy limestone kind) and marshes hold a special kind of rapture for me, but I think I will always come back to the sea when I need to feel whole again.

As I watched, a sandwich tern flapped into the little bay and started diving for fish. It was a beautiful sight to see, for the waters are so clear here that I could see the bird’s brilliant white form beneath the water after it had dived, moving like a living arrow. After five attempts it speared a shining silver fish and took off to the south with its catch in its beak. I realised the path on Google Maps didn’t actually exist and beat a quick retreat to the hotel for check-in.

The last time I was here, I only saw the town’s fishery out of hours. I got lucky this afternoon: on my way to the cape I dropped in and caught the daily auction (or lonxa) in full flight. Crates of hake, mackerel, red gurnard and more than a dozen other species I learned to identify as a kid went to the highest bidder in one of the mildest mannered auctions I’ve ever seen (though, to be fair, I haven’t seen that many auctions). Some of the larger fish had QR codes slapped on the sides linking them to the fishermen who caught them, I suppose – my camera didn’t reach far enough to tell.

On one side of the room, crates of sea urchins were stacked fifteen high. I didn’t see any percebes (the region’s famous goose barnacles), but then, the manner by which they are collected is very different indeed, so that’s hardly surprising.

I left before the giant anglerfish went under the hammer. I’d have been curious to know how much that went for.

I called home from the cape and said I’d be back before sunset. It’s now fifteen minutes to sunset and I’m still here, but I’m glad I stayed. The weather here is so changeable and this might be my only chance to watch the sunset from the cape, as it was rained off the last time I was here. A small cohort of like-minded pilgrims and locals have come out here with the same idea. A couple of noisy Spaniards made a pig’s ear of taking a highly choreographed selfie nearby, much to everyone’s frustration, but they’ve gone now, and it’s been nothing but the sound of the waves for the last twenty minutes.

I’m going to stop writing now. The sun will be sinking below the horizon soon and I want to appreciate every second as it does. See you on the other side. BB x

Camino XXVII: Journey’s End

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Finisterre. The End of the World. It’s a fitting place to end the Camino, which can sometimes feel like it really does go ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Well, here we are at the end of the road. Kilometre 0. My great quest for the summer is over.

With a good thirty-two kilometres between O Logoso and the seaside town of Fisterra, Simas and I set off early this morning. One last six o’clock start, an hour or so before the dawn, to end the Camino as it began: in the dark. The churring of nightjars echoed in the forest around us as far as Hospital, after which the road climbed up over a treeless moor before slowly beginning to descend toward the clouded horizon beyond.

We passed a few alarming signs declaring ‘territorio vákner’, which didn’t make a lot of sense until we stumbled upon an enormous sculpture in the woods of a wolf-man. The ‘vákner’ was, according to 15th century pilgrim lore, a Galician forerunner of the werewolf legend, and one of a number of terrible beasts that beset pilgrims in the forests after Santiago. The more you know!

Less fantastical, though by no means less legendary, we found a Tupperware box on one of the stone walls deeper in the woods containing a number of breakfast options: yoghurts, bananas and pastries, complete with plastic spoons in case of need. The invisible benefactor, an eleven-year old local boy, was trying to raise money for a trip to Madrid. I tipped him generously via his piggy bank and enjoyed the breakfast I otherwise might not have had this morning. What a little angel!

Shortly after leaving the forest, as though out of a dream, the sea came into view. I have been so excited to see the sea after three weeks on the road and saving it as a reward for the final day was definitely the right thing to do. We came down into the busy former whaling town of Cee and had a proper breakfast of churros con chocolate, for the princely sum of 3.75€. And that’s including Simas’ café con leche. I’m going to miss how cheap this country is.

Having killed an hour, we pressed on north and west through Corcubión, which was being kitted out for a medieval fair. We detoured a little to see the coast, and were guided back to the Camino by a friendly local afflicted by throat cancer, who pointed us back to the road using a robotic device at his throat. We had not gone much further than Estorde when the sun came out, causing the white sands of the beaches to shine out like a beacon. Given the gloomy forecast for the rest of the day, we took a chance and detoured once again to one of the coves, finding it deserted. And boy am I glad we did!

This was what I walked five hundred and sixty kilometres for: truly, the treasure at the end of the rainbow. There were no pots of gold, but there might as well have been diamonds in the water: each gentle wave kicked up clouds of white sand that glittered in the sunlight like a thousand twinkling stars. Sand eels and mullets darted in silver shoals nearby and a sandpiper scurried up and down the shoreline at a safe distance from us. The way the forests practically tumble right into the ocean, ringed with beaches that shine a purer white than anything the Mediterranean can muster… I’m amazed the Galician coast isn’t as heavy a hitter on the tourist trail as the Costa Brava. Amazed – and grateful. Because from some of the graffiti on the town walls – no a la Marbellización – it’s pretty clear the gallegos don’t want it to have that level of fame either.

A special mention should be made for saint number two of the journey: Nacho, a Valencian who had set himself up on the hill overlooking the Langosteira beach with two paella dishes full of home cooking that he was handing out to passers-by, free of charge. He was quite insistent on this last point, maintaining that though he was between jobs he had enough money by the grace of God to live on, and wanted to share his luck with the world. We had a good natter about what constitutes a real paella, but above all it was really uplifting to meet such a good-hearted man from my grandfather’s region – because while I’m proud to have Manchego heritage, my grandfather was actually born in Torrevieja, which means my immediate ancestry is actually Valencian. Go figure!

We reached Fisterra just after one and checked into the albergue municipal, which was already quickly filling up. It is as well that we did, too, as it landed us the final stamp in the credencial and an additional compostela for completing the final 100km of the Camino. After a quick nap we grabbed a table at O Pirata, a very characterful port-side seafood restaurant whose staff (and hangers-on) really did give off the right vibes as a motley crew rather than a team of restauranteurs. Between our waiter, who might well be the fastest-talking man in Spain, the chef with his black bandana and earring, and the three musicians sat outside, strumming guitars and clapping along – not to mention the seafood itself, which was delicious – it was easily the best meal of the whole Camino. Best of all, they threw in a free ego massage, telling me it wasn’t just the La Mancha shirt that gave away my Spanish heritage but also my ‘actitud’. I’ve actually managed to convince quite a few Spaniards that I’m a native on this Camino, which is a huge thing for me. I’m one step closer every day to reclaiming my heritage!

After lunch, Simas went back to the albergue for a siesta but I fancied a wander around town before the forecasted rain came down. What I thought might be a museum/aquarium in the harbour turned out to be an open-air working fishery, where a raised walkway lets you look down on the fishermen at work, processing and sorting the morning’s catch. It’s a brilliant idea and a fascinating way to have a look-in behind the scenes – especially after enjoying the fruits of their hard work for lunch! One chap was sat measuring the many thousands of razor clams and sorting them by weight, which looked to be a truly Sisyphean task: it must take hours to finish before the next haul arrives and the task begins again.

Stamps and celebratory seafood platters aside, you can’t say you’ve completed the Camino unless you really do go all the way to the end of the road, which is another three kilometres down the coast to the windswept cliffs of Cape Finisterre. The pictures imply a lonely lighthouse watches the cape, but it’s also home to a hotel, a bar, a car park and a couple of souvenir shops, so it’s not as remote a spot as you might think. The steep banks of the cliffs were pretty busy when we got there, with both pilgrims and tourists from various parts of Spain, and it was a good place to bid farewell to several pilgrims I have crossed paths with on the road: Alan, the wannabe hostalero, and the French team of three, Jean-Paul, Adine and Philippe; as well as Liza the Belgian (whose wish was granted by beating me to the Cape) and Catherine the German (who wins the award for the most random encounters along the whole Camino).

I found a quieter spot lower down and sat there for a while, watching the waters of the Atlantic below. It was a good place to reflect. I let go of a lot of things at last, letting them drift from my heart through my fingers and out across the ocean. Down below, gulls wheeled and cried around the cliff edge while a sparrow and a redstart made a few dizzying sallies across the precipice. My eyes were trained on the waves, searching for one thing in particular, and after half an hour – in the wake of a fishing boat – I saw what I was seeking. Not the lonely gannet or flight of shags that rounded the cape, but a fleet of shearwaters, an endearing and highly acrobatic seabird that truly lives up to its name, flying low over the water with the tips of their wings slicing the tips of the waves like blades. I was far too high up to tell what kind they might be, but I imagine they were Balearics, given their size and number.

If the ghostly harrier and quail were the spirits of the early Camino, it’s the handsome shearwater that marks its end. While I’ve walked most of the Camino alone, I’ve had companions every step of the way, from the merry stonechats that have been with me every day to the nightjars that have kept me company in the twilight hours. If you can put a name to the sights and sounds all around you, you’re never truly alone on the road.

If you kept going in a straight line from here, you’d reach Long Island and perhaps even New York City. But unless you have the stamina of a god and the strength to match, that’s simply not possible, so here the road ends at last. I penned the words ‘Llévame contigo’ (Take me with you) into my faithful stick and planted it in the earth just behind where I had been sitting. I hope somebody does take it with them, and that it brings them as much joy and support as it has brought me.

I thought of its predecessor, and the feathers that had made it so memorable to other travellers on the road, and as I did, a couple of ravens suddenly appeared on the wind, soaring in circles around the cliffs below. One of those feathers I carried before belonged to a raven – so perhaps they were with me all along in spirit. I’d like to think that. According to legends of old, it was a raven that first brought the light of hope into the world.

Well, that’s a wrap. It’s now twenty to eight on Friday 28th August. The rain is falling outside and I’m booked on the 11:45 bus back to Santiago. I’m going to find myself a café near the harbour and do some writing while I wait, in this seaside town with which I have fallen in love. Galicia has been beautiful since O Cebreiro but its coast has utterly enchanted me. It feels like home, and yet like Spain at the same time. It feels like Edinburgh, Hythe and Olvera all rolled into one.

I will come back. There is more to the Costa da Morte than I have seen. I must come back. BB x

Camino XXVI: RICE, RICE, Baby

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ve set down my bag for the night in O Logoso, a village up in the highlands to the west of the Great Lakes of Fervenza. It wasn’t yet one o’clock by the time we arrived, but I was persuaded by the images of a natural swimming pool nearby – and my shins are finally starting to complain, after almost three weeks on the road. I walk everywhere out of habit and that’s a fact, but even I have my limits!

I walked with Simas today, so I decided against shooting for Cee (in retrospect a wise move) and instead took it easy over the 23km hike toward Hospital. It’s a hell of a lot easier to stop to grab breakfast or a drink when you have company, so I took full advantage of Simas’ voracious appetite (the man puts food away like Logi in the old Norse legends) and had a Cola Cao and tortilla breakfast – possibly one of my last of the Camino!

It was great to have company on the road again. I’ve happily walked most of the Camino on my own, but it’s always enlightening to share the road with a kindred spirit – a memory shared is a memory doubled. I had time to reflect on the conversation I had with some of the other pilgrims in the albergue last night, too (which was marvellous, by the way, run by two very friendly abuela types who made us a home-cooked dinner to remember), and my line that it’s better to come away from the Camino with a lighter mind and a heavier load than the other way around (since no matter how many concerns I come out here with, I always seem to convert them through some unholy alchemy into the physical weight of books I collect along the way….!)

Simas asked for a brief history of Spain as we walked, which certainly helped to while away the time… I must have been yakking on for a good hour and a half at least, before I reached the 18th century, at which point my knowledge does run out all of a sudden, since it’s a period I’m not particularly interested in (it’s probably the ridiculous obsession with powder wigs).

We’ve met a lot of pilgrims coming back the other way – more than we’ve encountered heading to Finisterre, in fact. I guess those pilgrims mad enough to push on to the coast tend to be the ones who are equally mad enough to come back the same way. Collective insanity, Simas called it, and he’s probably right. Could you convince a friend to walk twenty to thirty (and sometimes forty) kilometres a day, every day, for four weeks? It’s a tall order unless you’re already bitten by the Camino bug…

After Santa Mariña the ground began to rise as we reached the edge of the coastal highlands. We didn’t quite see the Atlantic today, but we must be pretty close – I could smell the salt on the air as we came down the hill into O Logoso this afternoon, over the thunder of the river in the valley below. The countryside is certainly awe-inspiring: the tedious stretches of eucalyptus plantations between Sarria and Santiago seem a world away up here, while the endless wheat fields of the Meseta might as well be on another planet.

The stonechats are still here, as are the black redstarts and swallows – I even had two close encounters with a cuckoo today – but there are signs that the local fauna is about to shift one last time: I heard the cry of a full this morning from somewhere far away, and the Concello symbols on bus stops and hotels now feature the distinctive silhouette of a curlew – which, together with the rolling moorland, conjures up images of the north of England. I’m not lying when I say that this is probably the part of the Camino I have been most looking for to!

I think I’ve finally contracted a minor Camino injury in the form of shin splints – the merciless climb up and over Monte Avo today, even with the stick, probably didn’t help. I’m just grateful it’s happened this late in the journey, with just one day left to go – it would have been nothing short of torture had it happened last week, or worse, two weeks ago!

So I took it easy this afternoon and hit the I of the RICE method by taking a dip in the pool just up the road from O Logoso. Spain has a wealth of hidden piscinas naturales – many of which are in Extremadura’s mountainous north – and finding one this afternoon was just what the doctor ordered. Now, at least, I can apply the bandages I brought from my First Aid course before the end of term and take one more thing from my backpack before the journey home!

I’ll also make sure I eat well today and tomorrow. I’m conscious that my time here is running out, and the chance to dine out on delicious Spanish cooking won’t be so easy to find come the weekend… so roll out the bandages and roll on the bandejas! There’s only one day more to go. BB x