Going with the flow.

From Castrelos Park in Vigo, you can follow the Lagares River down to the sea at Samil or, as we discovered last summer, you can go in the other direction and end up somewhere on Avenida de Madrid, one of the main roads into Vigo. The bus from Oporto comes in that way. Yesterday we decided to do that walk in reverse, from wherever the walk begins to the park at Castrelos. 

So we planned our route in advance: along Calle Aragón, onto Sagunto, across Emilio Martínez Garrido and onto Ceboleira. Here there was a slight hiccough as there was a short stretch of unnamed road before we actually go to Ceboleira. But we managed not to get lost. From there we went onto the Estrada de Vilar, called Carretera de Vilar on its road sign. There’s a misnomer if ever there was one. To me “carretera” suggests a highway but this was little more than a one lane road. I suppose at some time in the past it was a main road between two of the small communities that merged into greater Vigo. 

After that we found Camiño da Fonte (Camino de la Fuente in Castilian Spanish) a small road that did indeed have a spring half way along it. Presumably before houses had running water this is where the local community came to fill its buckets and bottles. We had hoped to be able to get onto the river walk at that point, where Calle Gondarín crosses the river, but there was no access and no path so we had to continue to the main highway, Avenida de Madrid.  

At the start of the path was No Entry sign with a difference. Only authorised vehicles were allowed on but the sign itself had a sort of leaf design stencilled onto it. A nice touch! There was also an informative notice about all the birds you might spot on your walk. 

There were several of these along the way, all helpfully given only in Galician. Clearly they don’t expect people from other parts of Spain where Galician isn’t spoken to follow this walk.

The walk began nicely. You would have thought you were out in the country somewhere, all leafy boughs overhanging the river. And then you had to cross a road and walk for a good while through an industrial estate which was rather a disappointment, especially as it was not well signposted and you had to take it on trust that the path would improve again later. 
 
Fortunately it did so. We walked past a field with horses and admired the flowers and wildlife as we went along, even spotting a lizard at one point: our first this summer! We like to spot lizards; it feels as though summer is really here. 

Eventually we reached the park and admired the flowers and the “English Garden”, all formally laid out with its box hedge maze, currently closed to the public as it is being given some kind of treatment. This treatment has been going on for almost a year now. The maze looks very neat and tidy and very green so maybe the treatment is working. 

 We exited the park on the other side and stopped for a refresco before catching a bus home along Gran Vía. Our choice of cafe was determined by the fact that we came upon one that was showing the Tour de France on its TV screens. So one “clarita” (small shandy) turned into two as we watched Chris Froome power up Mont Ventoux in southern France to win the stage. We’ve been up that mountain, a long time ago now, and it is steep and windy, hence the name. 

After we had been there a while one of the local residents came and occupied a table just behind ours. He was clearly known to the staff; they knew exactly what he wanted without his having to ask. We, however, did not know him and were unsure whether his incoherent shouting was because he was drunk or merely one of the local care-in-the-community cases. 

Anyway, it soon became obvious that he was also watching the end of that stage of the Tour. Initially he was cheering on Alberto Contador, at that moment in the leading group with Chris Froome. “¡Vaya Contador! ¡Que gane Contador la etapa!” he shouted, in that special kind of hoarse shouting that is like a loud incoherent mutter. 

When Froome made his breakaway (How did he manage to do that? What does he have to make his legs work like that in that heat, at that gradient after all that pedalling?) and it was clear that no-0ne was going to catch him he changed his tune. At first it was a rather disgruntled, “He’s stealing the stage”. But then it changed to, “Le quito el sombrero a este Froome” – “I take my hat of to this Froome”. 

What’s more he pronounced Froome properly, unlike the TV commentators, one of whom was our old hero Pedro Delgado, who called him Chris From or Chris Frome, with a nice round O sound. 

Now, why, when the Spanish pronounce the letter U as an English OO, can they not say Froome? The mind boggles. It really does.