Thursday – 26 July 2018

We decided to spend the day in Baiona, as there was plenty to do and see. It started with an early morning run for Tricia and I, while Chris slept. We headed towards the castle that stands on the headland protecting the bay from the seaward side.  The guy in the marina had said that there was a nice walk around the outside, relatively on the flat, but we managed to take a wrong turn and headed up a hill, before running around the ramparts.  The views were spectacular, but the route was far from flat, with stairs in places and a very uneven surface.  Still all very good training. During our lap we saw where the path that we should have been on was, and so at the end of the lap we found our way to the path and made a second circumnavigation of the castle, this time slightly easier.

Later in the day we returned to walk the ramparts with Chris and saw a couple of things we had missed while we were running. In the harbour there is a replica of the Pinta, a ship that was part of Christopher Columbus’ fleet that discovered the New World. The Pinta was the first ship to get back to Europe with the news and had arrived at Baiona. The replica had made a repeat of the voyage arriving in 2009. The town was apparently also attacked by Francis Drake in 1585. The inhabitants repelled an attempt to take the town by the English privateer. Commanding 1500 men the Baiona Montreal fort was assaulted. However, the army of the Count of Gondomar, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, forced him to leave the bay.

On our walk we had noted a number of small beaches dotted into the coves around the outside of the headland.  Chris went back to go for a swim from one of these and reported that the water was not too cold.

We had been told that there was a market in the town, selling fish, meat and various vegetables.  It was supposedly in the historic part of the town, by transpired to be a relatively modern building which we could easily have missed.  Inside there was the variety of food that we had been promised, albeit only one or two stalls or each type.  We headed for the fish stall, and spent an interesting few minutes attempting to chat to the stall holder with the help of Google Translate. We ended up buying hake, which she cleaned beautifully.  Having bought the whole fish, she was very reluctant for us to leave any part, we think that she was saying that the head and in particular the cheeks were the best bits. This is almost certainly true and ideal if you are making a fish stew or soup. Both of these are beyond the possibilities of our cooking and storage arrangements, so we chose to leave them behind.

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	827.6	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	1548	nautical miles

Steve (and Tricia and Chris)