Cangas, Ria de Vigo

.....and a visit to Pontevedra

We had heard that the outer pontoons in the marina can get very rolly from ferry wash and so decided to anchor off the beach for a few days, and headed the short 3.5 nm across the ria from Vigo.

We anchored off the beach in around 5.5m plus rise of tide (total of 7.5m when we anchored.

The anchor held immediately and we congratulated ourselves on picking a good spot. The view of the town from the anchorage is at the head of this post and we were off the town’s main beach shown here.

We would later visit the Pedro Borba “gastrobar” towards the right of the photo – a pleasant modern bar playing Cafe Del Mar style music – right up our street!

However the relatively calm sea state hid a nasty little roll every five minutes or so. The wash from every ferry arriving or leaving Cangas (so 6 x per hour) had us clinging onto the boat.

This seemed to ease overnight but not entirely, and twice we had very violent rocking that threw anything not tied down about the place. And so in the morning we decided to go into the marina a couple of days early.

The marina has good toilet and shower facilities. The cost was around 207 euro for our 8 nights, including a 15% discount on the first 2 nights when the ASNAUGA Pasaporte is presented. Quite an increase on the 20 euro a night shown on their website from a couple of years back!

We were fortunate to get a space on the second pontoon in and near the wall by the office, well away from the ferries.

We would still experience a bit of rolling from the ferry wash, but nothing unpleasant.

We ended up spending 8 nights in Cangas. The first part on our own with no other English speakers around. We explored the resort town with many attractive old buildings at its heart and an excellent covered market with lots of fish stalls – our favourites! On our first night we had a plateful of small squid (“chipirones”) for a couple of euros and would later buy prepared dogfish (rock salmon), excellent in curries, at 1.25 euro per fish.

On our first night we had a large plateful of chipirones (small squid) for a couple of euro. Later we would buy two dogfish (aka rock salmon) which are excellent in curries, for just 1.25 euro per fish – prepared.

On our second day the street market came to town – quite a big affair, much bigger than in Bouzas. Many clothing and shoe stalls (Val bought a pair to go with her wedding outfit for our god-daughter’s wedding in Portugal next month) and many different food stalls plus plants and flowers. We had a good long morning exploring the market and the town generally, which is a very pleasant spot with enough interest for a few days stay.

The next day we caught a bus to nearby Moana from the bus station at the far side of the marina basin.

Moana itself was much prettier than we had been led to believe.

In Moana we bought lunch from the indoor market building and set of to walk back to Cangas on the beach as much as possible.

We walked past the marina which has apparently been upgraded with new pontoons relatively recently. From the website it looks very inexpensive, but we had passed it by as we had heard the Moana was not particularly attractive. We thought it was worth a day or three and may visit with Calypso in future.

Vigo and the hills behind makes a very interesting backdrop.

We had a very memorable walk back – keeping to the beaches as much as we could meant a good deal of rock-hopping around headlands, but we came across some delightful little beaches, with no houses at all behind some of them.

On the occasions we had no option but to climb above the beach we came across a very well kept lovely little church in a tiny settlement, followed by a semi deserted mussel farming dock with some abandoned goods and some still in use in open sided stores; along with a large settlement of squatters in the form of Mallard ducks.

They were fearless as we walked close by and we had a very nice St Emilion on board – but our foraging efforts haven’t quite built up to murdering Mallard just yet!

There was the odd path along the beach headlands, but mostly we were rock hopping around or diverting slightly inland.

The weather was perfect, we barely came across another soul and this was certainly one of our memory bank walks.

At the weekend we took the bus to the old capital town of Galicia, Pontevedra for an overnight stay.

The buses are very clean, modern coaches and we enjoyed the 1.50 euro 50 minute ride.

Our hotel (“Hotel Room”) was a modern and very clean business style hotel roughly midway between the bus (and train) station and the old town, which we had heard much about.

We anticipated something special and were not disappointed. Droppiing bags off at the hotel we were given a map of the old town with a recommended walk around it – which was an excellent way to discover the area with its maze of old streets, small and large squares and various religious sites.

We came across a marquee holding a large chess tournament – several rows like the one pictured. We took the opportunity to rest our feet and watched the young pretender beat his older adversary.

We are out three times during our stay. The highlight was Sunday lunch at the Savoy Restaurante overlooking the main square. The superb lunch was amazing value and we highly recommend it to those following.

Morrocan restaurant Dukela deserves an honourable mention!

Towards the end of our stay both John and Debbie on Shiraz (pictured) and Adam and Lynne on Charisma arrived.

The rest is a blur………………..