{"id":167,"date":"2010-08-10T11:13:12","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T11:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saints-hosting.org.uk\/sadfish\/visitgalicia\/?p=167"},"modified":"2010-08-10T15:25:17","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T15:25:17","slug":"our-third-visit-part-two-nirvana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"Our third visit \u2013 part two \u2013 nirvana uncovered"},"content":{"rendered":"

The third night of our visit found us straying outside Galicia and staying in the fantastic Asturian village of Taramundi<\/a>\u00a0at Casa Paulino<\/a>, a great little hotel which was recently renovated and which has excellent views at 38\u20ac per room per night.<\/p>\n

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View from Casa Paulino<\/p><\/div>\n

On our late arrival, after a long cross country drive,\u00a0we met up with Ramon of Spanish Country Cottages<\/a> and after a couple of beers hit a local hotel restaurant\u00a0for Fabas con almejas<\/a>(Beans and clams). It very soon became\u00a0apparent that Ramon is far more comfortable a talker than he is\u00a0a listener. His 100mph English, with a heavy Spanish accent, does take some acclimatisation. \u00a0What it shows is\u00a0his great enthusiasm for the\u00a0area, and despite us being a lot further east than we originally wanted he’d already sparked our interest in the Turia Valley, and everything that we now knew that\u00a0it had to offer.<\/p>\n

Three hours of listening later, with the occasional interjection while Ramon chewed a mouthful of beans, and we made our tired excuses agreeing to meet the following morning to see\u00a0the long list of properties\u00a0that Ramon, and his local ‘fixer’ Julio, had lined up for us. The morning seemed to arrive very quickly after a good night sleep, and at a very civilised 9:30, full of fresh coffee and pastries, Ramon introduced us to Julio who would be our driver and guide for the day. We immediately\u00a0liked Julio, and despite him not speaking a word of English (although we suspect he understands more that he lets on), \u00a0he had the kind of face and demeanor that you instantly trust. He looked vaguely like my Dad (who passed away in 2004) and had the same open demeanour and friendly grin. He also told Ramon to ‘be quiet’ on several occasions, although not quite\u00a0so politely.<\/p>\n

The double act continued as we hit the road in Ramons hired A-Class Mercedes, Julio at the wheel, driving like a Spaniard<\/a>. Ramon and Julio have properties throughout the Turia Valley which spans Galicia and Asturias but we’d made it clear to Ramon that we were only interested in Galicia, so we headed through A Pontenova<\/a>,\u00a0on to\u00a0Vilame\u00e1<\/a> and then to a small\u00a0dispersed\u00a0valley village called Li\u00f1eiras<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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First glimpse of Number 13<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

We drove along the south edge of the property in question, around a tight right hand bend, and up a steep road to see the property from the\u00a0side.<\/div>\n
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From the side<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

And then we parked up, got out of the car and saw the full glory of the house from the main entrance to the land.<\/div>\n
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Main house<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There was no shaking of heads, no pulling of faces, no negative telepathy, just big wide grins. It was Ramon and Julios first property of the day and already they had played an ace, pulled a rabbit out of the hat, scored a screamer from outside the box! This was exactly what we’d been looking for, and our new ‘best friends’, the double-act from the Turia Valley,\u00a0had found it for us at the first time of asking.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

What they were showing us was ’13 Li\u00f1eiras’ (trece pronounced tre-th-ay),a complex of houses and ruins set into the quiet rolling hillside with beautiful views down the valley and across the forests. Even in March, with bare trees and any wildlife with a brain still asleep or sunning itself in Africa, you could tell that it was a special spot. There was one main house, single storey on the top side and two floors down the slope which had a reasonable roof (only half a dozen holes) and faced south. Next to it were two further houses, in ruin and overgrown\u00a0with vegetation, and beyond those a large \u00a0ramshackle lean-to.<\/div>\n
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Valley view from the house<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Opposite the main entrance to the house was another ruined house set into the banking which contained a stone bread oven. Attached to the main house was a beautiful horreo which\u00a0rose three metres in the air and spans the track which runs down next to the house. There is also a barn (roof intact), and two further ruined houses about\u00a0twenty metres away from the main house. The land area was over 7,500 square metres (almost 2 acres), gently sloping and of good arable standing.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

We felt like we’d hit the jackpot. If this was the first, had they gone all out, or were they saving even better for later?<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

We must have spent over an hour exploring and investigating before being ushered away to see another half a dozen great properties. Some of the others had nicer houses, or more land, or even better views, but none of them had the full package that ‘trece’ had to offer.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Now we had some serious thinking to do.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The third night of our visit found us straying outside Galicia and staying in the fantastic Asturian village of Taramundi\u00a0at Casa Paulino, a great little hotel which was recently renovated and which has excellent views at 38\u20ac per room per … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,31],"tags":[33,17,21,34,35,30,32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}