Hotting up!!

In Saturday’s Voz de Galicia, one of the local newspapers, I read that the “English summer” is not giving in. Well, yesterday “el verano inglés” decided to let the sun shine properly once again. What a nice day it was! That being so, we set off on a walk to Castrelos Park to check up on the rose gardens and the sculptures and such. 

 

 The roses were still looking fine. Some of the new artistic additions are a little odd. There really is not much need for sculptures of tree stumps; nature can do it better. 

 

Then there were some strange little red houses, making it look as though someone had been having a giant game of Monopoly and had not picked up all the pieces afterwards. 

Coming back we followed the River Lagares upstream, rather like intrepid explorers looking for the source of the Nile. We had asked at the tourist office about “rutas de senderismo”, hiking routes in the area and following the river towards Samil beach was one of their suggestions. We had already done that, going from Castrelos to Samil, so we followed it part of the way back towards the start of the river. It was quite interesting and almost completely empty, as was Castrelos Park for that matter. It may be that everyone was having lunch but it does seem as though the people of Vigo don’t make the best use of the resources they have around. 

 

When we asked at the tourist office about “rutas de senderismo”, they were friendly and helpful but didn’t have a great deal to offer. I asked about possible routes from Cangas and Moaña, just a boat-ride away across the estuary after all. But such information was not available from the Vigo tourist office. It would be too sensible to have leaflets there when, after all, Cangas and Moaña have their own tourist offices. You just have to go there to find them. The fact that people might actually be inspired to go on the ferry if they have the information in advance, thus spending money and encouraging local enterprise, did not seem to occur to anyone. In today’s free paper I read about the mayor of Santiago saying how they must try to combat “localismos”; the cities of Galicia need to work together. OK, he was really talking about the need for the three airports of the region to get their act together and instead of competing with each other put up a united front to combat Oporto. However, the message is the same in other aspects of tourism here. 

Anyway, back to yesterday, we followed the river for a fair distance and then made our way through various housing developments back towards Gran Vía. Then we headed up Gran Vía to the crazy horses, and made our way homewards, stopping for a very welcome “clara”, when we eventually found a cafe open, to refresh the intrepid explorers. 

Today, the weather men have still managed to keep “el verano inglés” at bay. It has been very hot indeed. On our way to the wifi cafe this evening (8.30 pm) we noticed 29° on one chemist’s sign. It won’t be long before we have people saying it’s just too hot!!