A Caruña, Spain

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We had a very civilized arrival in A Caruña. Nice calm seas which meant I could prepare the boat for marina docking with ease as opposed to the ungraceful crawling around the deck I’ve had to do on some other approaches. 

By the time we were secure at the dock we realized we were melting in our sailing foulies. What a strange and pleasant feeling to be warm!

It was so nice we decided a cold beer was in order rather than the usual hot tea. 

The marina staff assured us this was not usual weather for this time of year.  Nevertheless, we enjoyed an evening relaxing in the cockpit and making sightseeing plans for tomorrow. 

There were a couple of other transiting yachts on the same dock as us, the first we’ve seen since leaving La Rochelle two weeks ago. 

SV Therese, a Lagoon 42 catamaran next to us was enroute to Croatia for its destiny as a charter boat.  It’s skipper, the German CEO of the charter company stopped by to say hello and then proceeded to tell us that Fountaine Pajots are the worst of all the production catamarans and the Astrea 42 is the worst boat Fountaine Pajot produces. Nice!  Trying to change the subject we told him that Mike’s brother lives near Munich and he was quick to tell us that Bavaria is the worst State in Germany. Sometimes you just can’t win!

We chose Marina Caruña over Reale Nautico because Nautico shares its space with the cruise liners and commercial ships and we weren’t interested in having them as neighbors for a couple of nights. We were happy with our choice. The marina had the best facilities so far; the visitor docks are well maintained and secure, shore power was 32 amps so we didn’t have to turn our heating off every time we wanted to boil the kettle and best of all, fabulously hot power showers.  All this located just a few minutes walk from the old town. 

We woke the following morning to torrential rain.  So heavy we had to hold off on sightseeing until it passed, which wasn’t until 5 pm.  The day wasn’t totally wasted though.  We had the 50 hour service completed on the engines, then went food shopping so that I could make up meals for our next passage from A Coruña to Lagos. 

As soon as the rain started to ease we went out to explore and I’m so glad we did. What we saw of A Coruña in the following 3 hours made me wish we weren’t heading off so soon.

A Coruña has Europes longest promenade.  At 9 km long it runs around the city’s headland. I think we walked most of this before sunset.  It felt good to stretch our legs and our timing coincided with the locals ‘promenading” which the Spanish do so well. 

Our walk also took us to the Tower of Hercules. Built in the first century, it is the oldest operating lighthouse in the world and stands proudly and impressively on the headland. Unfortunately because it was so late in the day, the tower was closed but at least we got to enjoy it from the outside. 

As the last light of day faded we wound our way through the old city streets to Plaza de Maria Pita. 

Considered the heart of the city, on one side stands the impressive City Hall while the other three sides are lined with arcaded buildings whose arches house various cafés and restaurants underneath. We had hoped to enjoy a drink and light supper here but everything was closed. We couldn’t figure out if it was because of the weather, because it’s low season or because 8 pm is just too early in the evening.  It’s likely the latter, we still haven’t adjusted to Spains late night culture. 

Just as we returned to Dreams of Infinity the heavens opened and the city received another deluge of heavy rain. We were happy not to be caught in that. 

It would have been nice to stay another day and explore more of A Coruña but there’s a big storm system approaching and if we don’t leave tomorrow we’ll almost certainly be held up in A Coruña for up to a week before it will be safe to move on and we still have a lot of miles to cover to get to Gibraltar by the end of the month.  So, onwards we must go.