Ribadeo
Went into the town to look around and shop to
replace diminishing stores.
Ribadeo town is a mixture of past elegance,
falling into disrepair and in some cases falling down, contrasted with modern
houses and blocks of flats. There is an extremely nice square with flowers, box
hedging, and a fountain; this dominated by a wonderful building with cupola and
a splendid shining roof, elaborate weather vane, balconies and beautiful
windows, porticos but windows are broken and tufts of grass are appearing here
and there . Other old and characterful buildings are in a similar state, some
much, much worse; if something isn't done soon these attractive pieces of
historic architecture will be lost.
But hey, this is Spain – mañana.
Went to a specialist
fish restaurant and it was truly excellent with every sort of shell or squidgy
and rubbery, large & small fish you can think of (well perhaps not the
poisonous ones or others too diabolical to eat). It was absolutely excellent, we
were suffering a 'protein high' by the time we got back to the boat. The
tradition in this part of Galicia is to drink white wine, poured from a great
height, into wide mouthed cups much like the cider cups in Brittany. The high
level pouring aerates the wine and brings out the flavour, it was delicious. We
slept rather well.
Have now anchored out
having availed ourselves of marina resources for 2 days. We are anchored off a
series of small beaches (the sand is quite dark compared with east coast UK),
surrounded by short rocky cliffs full of large dark caves – a child's paradise
as the beach shelves slowly and water is tranquil at the
moment.
This ria has shoals of
sand which apparently move about underwater, much like Deben or Ore river
entrances, consequently all printed charts are out of date, we are relying on
local info and eyeball navigation and hope that we make it through the night
without spinning around into one of the shoals – we shall see. 
We are also close to this rather grotty but clearly still
working shipyard.
