Rest day - A Coruna - Land of the Rabbits

July 29, 2023

Rest day - A Coruna

I was still pretty ambivalent as to what my plans would be on going to bed. The bar actually shut down pretty early and I slept really well. Getting up it seemed like (i) hare-ing it around the coast was a bit pointless since there was plenty to see here and (ii) there was no need to get closer to Santiago, since I could easily do it in a day from here. So I decided to have a proper rest day in A Coruna.

I spent a good couple of hours in the morning waking up and getting some admin done, including finalising my hire car confirmation. Then I paid for another night's camping, a had a lively conversation with the friendly proprietress (who I think comes from Paris and is not German, though I can't place her accent). We commiserated about the high prices in Paris and London, and she told me about her nephew who is a kind of semi-professional pilgrim and has walked the Camino Primitivo covering 25km a day. Impressive stuff.

She suggested I just take a bus into A Coruna, and it's a suggestion I was happy I followed, since the motorways around the town look pretty nasty to navigate by bike. I walked back into Sada, and after briefly catching the wrong bus (pro tip to bus drivers: if a foreigner walks onto your bus and says "A Coruna?" in a highly questioning voice, and you are not going to A Coruna, please don't nod, take their money and wave them on. I know there's a language barrier but surely there's some obvious context here!) I got on the right one ten minutes later (to balance the universe: with an extremely helpful and chilled-out driver).

Disembarking I was immediately greeted by crowds of teenagers milling around waiting for concerts to start - looks like it is a festival weekend in A Coruna. I saw a pretty good band playing in the gardens, they were rocking pretty hard and seemed to have a dedicated local following, though the crowd was mostly my age. Not sure indie rock is really what the cool kids are into these days.

Kids camping out, waiting to get into the music festival venue

Pretty good band. Guitarist on the right appears to be wearing one of Sybil Faulty's outfits

Famous glazed verandas keep out the wind and rain

I found a charming little square in the old town and ate a very nice pizza (sadly having to pick ham off it - it isn't Spain until you've picked unwanted ham off something). Then I went off searching for the tower of Hercules, the famous Roman lighthouse.

Of course, there must have been lots of synagogues throughout Iberia

The day was a mixture of grey and light rain with patches of sun. It was quite a long walk to the lighthouse, and I was surprisingly knackered (and my ankle was hurting again. I really did a number falling on it on the mountains near Tudanca, it was amazing it barely hurt at the time).

I want to catch a band at a venue called "Lebowski"!

On the other hand, I would describe the branding on this bar as "a little bold"

The weather can turn on a dime in A Coruna. The sea is on two sides and quickly brings in (warm) drizzle

Cool surfing statue on A Coruna seafront

The lighthouse is pretty amazing - I thought the "Roman" claim was a bit of a swizzle, since the facade is all 18th century, but it turns out the whole interior is still original Roman and it has been in continuous use as a lighthouse for almost 2000 years. Pretty amazing.

The only annoyance is it does have the stupidest ticket system I have ever come across. No, you cannot just pay 3 euros to come in. You need to pay for a ticket online on your smartphone - something I needed to verify with my bank, so just 10 minutes of boring bureaucracy then. Thank god I couldn't have just handed over the two coins in my pocket, that would've been so hard! There were crowds of people puzzling over this and everyone asking the guard the same question (where do I pay?). Stupid smartphones ruin everything. Still, very cheap for an amazing visit.

The Tower of Hercules. The actual lighthouse has nothing to do with Hercules, but on re-discovering its history in the 18th century local historians realised it was classical, so I guess it was a fun myth to associate with it.

This outer facade is only a couple of hundred years old, and was built to protect the interior of the lighthouse

...but the huge stone vaults inside are original Roman. The ingenious design of a stack of doom-roofed vaults allowed them to build this very high structure with remarkably little stone, and to effectively turn the lighthouse into a fortress: there was room to billet part of a legion within these chambers

The staircase was also added in the 18th century, and passes up through different vaults in order not to weaken the Roman structure

The dome of the top vault. The light sits on top of this

Sun coming out over A Coruna from the top of the Tower of Hercules

View to the wild coast and park around the lighthouse headland. I like the fun symbols on the compass.

I stumbled - my ankle was really giving me a bit of trouble now - back to the bus stations, and amid a scrum of confused people - the only timetable was a tiny torn A4 sheet surrounded by fly posters - actually got on a bus within 15 minutes. Back in Sada I had a much-needed and very civilized beer, and then hit up the Potata Brava again for some more excellent tapas. They seemed pleased to see me this time, I avoided taking up too big a table this time.

Very full and content I made the couple of miles walk back to camp. The beach was very lively it being Saturday night, and a (sparsely attended) campsite nightclub was booming out music. I don't really mind this when a load of people are having fun, but it gets on my wick a bit when there aren't even many people there to appreciate it - it feels more like noise pollution to drum up business than anything else.

I was obviously pretty tired, somewhat drunk and my ankle was hurting and I wanted to go to bed - and this is the best explanation I have for the comedy self-own I did next. I'm still not quite sure why I did this - I can only ascribe it to what I call "Peter's Mad Thoughts". These are the ridiculous and outrageous ideas that sometimes pop into my head, that would be very very funny to enact - for about 5 minutes, until the consequences hit. A good example was when I was taking a break at a viewpoint by the road in the mountains in Asturias. My feet were kinda sore. I suddenly had the thought - no, the impulse - to remove my shoes and in one glorious motion throw them powerfully over the precipice. To do so would have not only been stupid and self-defeating, it would have been a disaster - how the hell would I have got any further with no shoes? I wouldn't have been able to ride, or even walk. It would have been totally shooting myself in the foot (which hurts even more when you have no shoes on). A real Brexit move. But - and even thinking about it made me giggle - for one glorious moment it would have been very, very, funny.

So I hope to never actually enact these. But I got sadly close that evening. Because, while ironically the lovely bar closed early and was quiet as a mouse, some not very considerate people had rigged up a sodding floodlight on the front of their massive tent (attached to their massive caravan, beside a marquee containing their TV and microwave etc). This illuminated the whole campsite - apart from their sleeping quarters, of course - with a light bright enough to read by. I'm not exaggerating - I could actually read by it inside my tent. So, the previous night I wasn't too happy about this. I was also tired, too tired to remonstrate, so - about 12.30 - I snuck out and I found my bike shorts had the perfect elasticated diameter to press around the light. It was perfect! It didn't even obliterate it, just filter it so I no longer felt I was sleeping in Colditz. During the night, it was pretty stormy, and they got knocked off. So I snuck back over and retrieved them early in the morning. The perfect crime.

Ah, but now I got cocky. My mistake was doing it much earlier, and while the very active proprietress was still about. I sneaked over, using the deep shadows of the trees as cover, and then - zipped over like a ninja and re-applied my bike shorts to the light. Perfect! I retreated to the tent chuckling to myself.

Half an hour later, a gaggle of girls came round to the front, saw the bike shorts illuminated like a lantern, and fell about in hysterics. They found it very, very funny. Then the campsite own came around, and weirdly seemed quite sympathetic to me. They turned the light off. YES! Success! But they did point to my tent - I was peeking out in a frankly childish way - and I did overhear "no molestar", presumably "don't bother him". Then - the proprietresses husband came along and removed the shorts with a pole, leading them through the site like some weird procession.

Why did I do this? What is wrong with my? Oh well - I guess it caused much merriment and gave them a story to tell. And I got that sodding light turned off, and maybe they'll think twice before blinding everyone on the campsite again.

I did, however, wake up at 5.30am, and quite the campsite before 7. I told myself this was to get to Santiago early - but really I wanted to make sure I didn't have to explain myself.

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Mike AylingHere in Oz we have enthuisastly adopted electronic payments and I am starting to see signs saying card only, no cash!
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9 months ago

Jon AylingTo Mike AylingHa, yeah one or two places where I've seen this too. The weirdest was in Iceland, at a remote petrol station, where a poor American guy had a big wedge of Kroner as cash but his card wouldn't work. The petrol station wouldn't accept his cash so he couldn't pay for fuel!
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9 months ago

Mark BinghamIceland is completely cashless now. Last Fall we were there for an entire week and never once used cash. EVERYTHING was Apple Pay, even out in the most remote sections of the country (which, interestingly, always had 5G).
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9 months ago

Mark Bingham"Then - the proprietresses husband came along and removed the shorts with a pole, leading them through the site like some weird procession."
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9 months ago

Jon AylingTo Mark BinghamOh yeah - I could really see cash disappearing there. I don't think I ever spent all my notes - still have £100 worth of Kroner sitting around somewhere I never got round to exchanging (if I can find it!)
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9 months ago

Jon AylingTo Mark BinghamHaha - I can't work out if it's my finest moment or the one I'm keenest to forget! :-D
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9 months ago