Day 37

The pilgrims were gone. The last I had seen of them was when I left Ribadeo and passed the Albergue Pelegrino, situated at a privileged location just outside the city, at the water next to the bridge connecting Asturias and Galicia. Many people were waiting outside already to claim a bed. I will never understand this focus on arriving, on treating the walking as a means to get somewhere, not as the goal itself. It was shortly after twelve, I had only just started walking, I was in no hurry. It was easy to navigate, I followed the Camino Natural de la Ruta del Cantábrico, named after the Cantabrian Sea, the coastal sea of the Atlantic Ocean that borders the northern coast of Spain, the sea was right next to me most of the time. The pilgrims were following another route, inland in the direction of Lugo and to Santiago de Compostela from there.
I had seen pictures of As Catedrais, The Cathedrals, and had seen it described somewhere as “a natural monument with a supernational dimension”. The cathedral of the sea, rocks that had been hollowed out century after century to form arches within arches, resembling human-built flying buttresses, accessible at low tide. Several people had told me I shouldn’t miss them. It made me cautious, because I know that if you have certain expectations about something that is a kind of world wonder, there is a big chance you will be disappointed, especially since these monuments and places attract many visitors and often have restricted access. I’ve never been more impressed by something I planned to visit and had knowledge about before seeing it than I’ve been by unexpected landscapes, buildings, weather circumstances, historical sites, objects or living presences.
It was a 12 kilometre walk to Rinlo, a fishing village with 300 inhabitants, once a whaling port, and from there another 4 kilometres to As Catedrais beach. I found the first part breathtaking, no doubt it helped that the weather was fine and I was alone in the landscape for most of the walk. Sometimes it diverted from the coastline and led through fields but most of the time only a narrow strip of overgrown soil and barren rocks seperated the sandy trail from the sea. The stones were scattered with yellow lichen and sea figs, carpobrotus chilensis, grew everywhere, showing off their bright magenta flowers. I nibbled on some leaves and put some in my bag, apart from being edible the leave juice can be applied to the skin and is a calming curative for anything ranging from insect stings and cracked lips to burns, bruises and more severe skin conditions. The flowers close at night and open again in the morning.
In every walk there is at least one moment when everything falls into place, when doubts disappear, questions have dissolved, when all there is is being in this moment and nothing else matters. It hadn’t happen on this walk yet and I hadn’t thought about it but there is was, when I was sitting on a rocky plateau looking out over the ocean. “If I would fall down this cliff now, I wouldn’t mind”, I thought, not meaning I was tempted to actually jump off, rather the opposite. I am not sure how to explain this, I know the beauty and tranquility of a location can be of help but isn’t a prerequisite. I suspect reaching a point in a process (in this case the walking) where you’ve partially relied on will power to get where you are has something to do with it. I sat there for a long time, at some point quite aware of the question embroidered on my left trouser leg: “What is success?”
My favourite places are always the places where the aura of what has been there for a long time isn’t disturbed by humans to the extend that it has overtaken the essence of a place. Rinlo was a good example of that. It wasn’t in any of the “most beautiful villages in Spain” lists but I liked it more than the villages I’ve been to that are. It was small, with narrow streets and brightly painted houses, a lot of them having little vegetable gardens. It was lunch time and it it smelled of seafood everywhere. If you would think away the cars, you could easily imagine yourself being in another era.
After Rinlo everything changed. Access to nature was restricted to the path that turned into a long wooden construction to protect the natural environment from the big amount of people visiting daily. When I reached As Catedrais I didn’t go down to the beach, but promised to come back one day in winter, on a windy weekday morning before sunrise.