The banks of the Miño
We did a different route for our Sunday walk this week.
“I’m fed up with hills,” I said.
From our A Casa do Campo, it’s impossible to walk anywhere without a hill – either up into town or down to the rio, and then there’s the corresponding one on the other side.
“I know,” I said. “Let’s walk along the Miño. That’s flat.”
And indeed it is – sort of.
We drive the fifteen minutes from home along winding roads edged with the colours of spring – soft mauves of the wild heather and the golden, egg-yolk yellow of the honey-scented gorse.
We cross the river Miño and parked up next to the huge iron bridge. This bridge was built to replace the old Ponte Fortes, a low stone-arched bridge which was itself built to cross the river in the 1940s as an alternative to the boat service which used to ferry people from one side to the other. The Ponte Fortes was built using cheap local labour and Franco's political prisoners, but its days were numbered before it was even built, as plans were already in place to dam the valley.
Buttercups edge the Belesar reservoir
With a capacity of 654.5 hm3 (hectometres cubed, or 654.5 million cubic metres) the Belesar reservoir is the largest in Galicia.
There's another bridge below the waters down there
The valley, and the old bridge, were flooded in 1963. The boats had to return to service for a further three years before the existing iron bridge, known as the Bridge of Screws due to its construction, was built high above the river.
The bridge of screws and a green lane
The track we want runs along the ridge of the Miño on the south bank.
We wander beneath cherry trees in full bloom, their petals falling on our heads like confetti.
Beneath cherries and cliff faces
The high cliff on our right is imposing. Slate sheers off regularly and in places rivulets run down its grey face as tiny streams make their way to the river many metres below. Underfoot, the track isn’t as level as I remember. Something – probably a badger or wild boar, has been crazily digging up turfs of grass. These lie haphazardly in clumps, their roots facing the sky.
Delicate wild daffodils and golden buttercups against the slate rocks
We pick our way around them to be confronted by a meadow of tiny wild daffodils and golden buttercups, hugging the cliff down to the river way below us. The daffodils look so delicate with their almost white reflexed petals and narrow stems.
Delicate daffs and vicious brambles
The blackberries have taken over since we last visited. It looks like no one has walked down here for a while. Brambles lie in wait underfoot to trip me and, while I am looking at my feet, another snatches my cap, dangling it from gnarled fingers, waving it at me.
The track is overgrown but a delight
We weave and dodge along the track, high stepping and low ducking. Around a corner, beyond a muddy puddle which almost, but not quite, spans the narrow track, I spy a muddle of pale-lemon yellow.
The primroses are clumped together in this one spot, where the trees are further apart allowing more light to this patch of damp ground.
Across the river, is the Club Nautico of Mourulle and its associated hostel, currently being used by our lovely council to host Ukranian families fleeing the horrors of war. How different our peaceful concello must seem to them.
Suddenly we come to an obstacle. A tree has fallen, blocking the track. It must have been a while ago as brambles grow thickly over the horizontal trunk. There is no way over there.
Oops! It's a steep drop
A tiny path leads to the left, towards the river cliff. Someone, or something, has made a narrow defile around, under and over the end of the tree. Brambles grow here too so hubby fashions a battering ram from a broken branch to beat the intruders away. Even so one grabs my hair, another my waist, and a third tries to trip me as I limbo under one branch then throw my leg over a second, only to realise that I’m too short to touch the ground. I am now balanced on a rickety tree branch high above the river, hoping it doesn’t choose this moment to give way.
It doesn’t and we emerge, scratched and dirty, but unbeaten, on the other side.
Hubby battles through
Our joy is sadly short-lived as the next obstacle in this slow race is an impassable swamp. The tree which overhangs it is too thin to dangle from, the brambles too low and too thick to dodge, my summer trainers not waterproof enough to stomp through. In short, we are defeated.
Views down to the Miño
I am surprised when I look at my phone clock that it is 5.30 already. Of course, the clocks jumped forward this morning so it will be light until after 9pm here in Galicia now. I’ll not get onto a rant about the pointlessness of the daylight saving…but the chickens think I’m bonkers, shutting them in when it’s light and feeding them an hour early.
Christmas roses (hellebores) and daffs
We return; over and under the fallen tree, through the primroses, past the green and purple Christmas roses, through the meadow of nodding daffodils, and the just emerging asphodels, past the buttercups and the white and pink daisies.
I hum a rhyming ditty to myself: daffodils and asphodels, primroses and Christmas roses, buttercups and daisies. It’s quite catchy.
A buzzard soars on a thermal above us and the house martins have returned to their nests, below the girders of the iron bridge, using the river mud to remake their homes each year.
View of the iron bridge and heather covered bank from the Club Nautico
We skip out to the car and I wander across the bridge to take a shot of the sun glinting on the water. Maybe it wasn’t the easy route I’d planned but it was a good walk, a very good walk.
