Exploring Island area of Sanxenxo, A Lanzada and O Grove in Galicia | Camino del Norte – Day 31

On the Day 31 of our Camino de Santiago del Norte we hiked from the town A Lanzada to O Grove in Galicia.

It was a rainy morning and we had to stay in the tent all the time packing our clothes. It is always extremely hard and inconvenient. And most importantly the tent gets so soaking wet that it weighs a ton and the next evening we have a completely wet tent to sleep in. But we had to move and after hard packing we were out of the camping.

We hadn’t much time to look around it but it was quite a small elongated camping close to the coast. That’s really all we can remember about it. The place itself looked interesting with the big gulfs and long cliffs.

We just had several minutes to enjoy the view and our bus came to take us to the city Ferrol. Where we had another bus to take way longer trip to Pontevedra. And finally the third one going to A Lanzada cause we wanted to spend the last couple of days at the coast.

We decided to travel there because there were few of the campings open in this season and we thought that it would be nice to go around this islandy area. So almost the whole day we were on the bus, just when we changed the bus we spent several hours in Ferrol and then in Pontevedra.

Ferrol seemed to us a very severe town where everything turns around the port. When we tried to get to the viewpoint of it we had to walk several kms along the high brick wall where all the facilities of the port were hiding and also something related to the naval army. The port was huge and occupied all the banks of the gulf.

In Pontevedra we didn’t see much of the town – just had a quick walk to the supermarket and then back to the bus station.

When we were at our final destination the back pain was real from hours spent in the bus and we felt not less tired than from the day hiking. A Lanzada it was completely dark but fortunately our camping wasn’t too far from the bus station.The only thing we could notice right away about the area is that it’s very populated and developed with lots of hotels and restaurants. We got to the camping in the dark and went to sleep very late after setting everything up and cooking.

We had quite a bad sleep that night because we chose the wrong ground for the tent. We couldn’t see very well in the dark and we thought we set it right but in reality it wasn’t. There was a bad sidehill and we were rolling sideways all the time.

So we started the day late and got out of the camping at the latest possible hour of check out at 12.00 am. The camping was actually very nice and the views of the surrounding islands were absolutely fantastic. And the price was one of the cheapest we’ve paid on the whole Camino – very reasonable. The facilities were clean and recently renovated. The only thing it was quite small and not having much trees – but the view beats it all definitely.

So we went out of it and right away were forced to walk along the car road because there was no alternative path. And the thing that we noticed yesterday about the place being very touristic with the variety of hotels and apartments just got proved. We were there out of season and so couldn’t really see the whole picture how it is when it’s hot but we could imagine that it might be very busy.

We passed along the beach and went out to the Ermita de Nosa Señora da Lanzada and saw the ruins of the Roman town. It was a viewpoint of one the longest beaches of Galicia La Lanzada.

From the very start we paid attention that there were practically no waves at all at the beach and as far as we could see and our suggestion was that its because of the islands in front that calm down the waves. But then looking at the map we saw that from the both sides of this land there are two huge river flows that look like an ocean bays and then we thought that it can be the rivers causing it or maybe it depends on the season. But we need to research that as it is a very interesting phenomenon.

We were a bit dissapointed because we were expecting to see the big ocean waves and all the power of this beautiful nature element. But on the other hand it was an easy goodbye to ocean without knowing we were getting away from it because then it would be much harder for us.

And so we got out to Praia Da Lanzada long piece of land connecting A Lanzada to O Grove. The weather was extremely windy that day and walking several kms through the open space like this was definetely a challenge. But there was a special wooden path to go along the beach that was very nice. Also we saw a particular bird living there and had a chance to capture it.

Then we planned to get to the Mirador de Siradella that was higher up on the top of the hill. It was so calm and peaceful to be finally walking in the forest with almost no wind after this stormy blast of wind. The uphill wasn’t very hard and we were at the place quite fast. The viewpoint was excellent with the great overview of La Lanzada and the beach, bird-eye point of view. And the rocks laying onto each other were looking astonishing. Also we visited another viewpoint Con Da Heda which was giving us similar views and a little bit of the opposite side of the island as well.

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Our way to the camping was through the countryside and we were moving quickly trying to escape the free running dogs remembering our last experience. But everything was ok and we got to the camping at around 18.00 pm which was early compared to our last days. We tried to buy some food at the local shop but it was closed so we had to buy few tomatoes and some fruit at the camping bar which weren’t the best but we had nothing to eat instead. So after having our modest dinner we had time to relax and went to sleep quite early.

Here is the link to Google map to follow the hike: