Transport

Over the last few days I have had to contend with traffic on my morning run. This is unusual. My run takes me uphill through the start of the San Xoan do Monte district of Vigo, behind our blocks of flats and eventually down by the Carrefour shopping centre and back onto Aragón, allowing me to stop at the bread shop and discuss weather with the panadera. Usually it’s very quiet but since the children went back to school earlier this week it’s been full of cars, many of them parked on the pedestrian stripes at the side of the road, rendering my route a little dangerous at the corner just before the school. Today there was even a small traffic jam for a few minutes as parents stopped to drop their offspring at school. 

 This is clearly not the case for little Chelsea, whom I read about in La Voz de Galicia last night. Little Chelsea has started school in Seixalbo, a little place somewhere near Ourense. She lives in another little place called San Sibrao. There is a bus to and from school but because she has just started and is going through a “período de transición” she only attends two hours a day for the first week and finishes school before the bus service runs. Consequently her mother, who has no car, walks three kilometres to school to collect little Chelsea and then walks her back three kilometres home, rather a long way for a small girl. Daft, I call it! 

By the way, how does a small Spanish girl come to be called Chelsea? What’s wrong with good Spanish names like Carmen and Rocío and María Isabel? I think her mother, whose name is Mauri by the way, must have been reading the wrong books and magazines and watching the wrong TV programmes. 

And then, this morning I saw a father arrive at school with his remarkably small daughter on the back of his scooter – ok, she did have a helmet on – and perched in front of him was her school bag. Of course, they all have those wheelie bags, like Ryanair hand-luggage, that look almost big enough to carry the child let alone their lunchbox and school books! This child was so small that she had difficulty reaching up to kiss her papá goodbye. Needless to say, he didn’t get off his scooter but just watched trot confidently through the gate pulling her bag behind her. 

I didn’t actually run yesterday, a fact commented on by my panadera. This was because I was going to the station to meet my young friend Sara, one of the 6% extra “auxiliares de lengua” I mentioned the other day. She’s going to be working in a school in the outskirts of Santiago again, like she did last year. 

We had arranged to go off to the Islas Cíes for the day, before the boats stop running for the winter. This photo below is of the smaller island which you can't visit on the normal boat trip. I think you need special permission and a private boat for that. But it doesn't stop you taking pictures as you walk up to the lighthouse.

I had bought the tickets on Wednesday to be sure of getting them. It’s very frustrating to meet someone, go to the ticket office and then discover that the boat is full. Not so likely to happen in September but, better safe than sorry! 

I had to give them my passport number when I bought the tickets. Why is that? Are the Islas Cíes a foreign country? Are they going to count the grains of sand and then chase up all the people who visited on a particular day so that they can reclaim them? Another administrative mystery! 

Anyway, we got there safely. We trekked up to the lighthouse, stopping en route to find Sara lodging in a small cave. 

Then we even made it into the sea, which was COLD! Not unexpectedly so, of course, and we are both from northern climes so we are used to cold sea water. 
 
What we didn’t manage was a proper meal, having spent too long swimming, sunning and chatting on the beach. By the time we got to the restaurant by the campsite they had stopped serving lunch. So we made do with an ice cream. At the place by the harbour there was a notice saying they stopped serving tapas at three o’ clock but there was a huge slab of empanada on the counter and they were quite prepared to let us have a ración. So we didn’t starve. The overall verdict was that we had a good day. 

 Today there has been considerable traffic on the estuary. A huge cruise liner turned up at nine o’clock or thereabouts. Later I noticed an enormous yacht parked behind it, not quite as substantial but almost as long as the cruise ship. And then there was one of those planes from the fire service, dipping down to the bay, picking up a load of water and flying off to dump it on a fire somewhere. 

 For a while the place was quite buzzing with activity. I’m not sure I can stand the excitement!