![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.visitgalicia.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/House1110.jpg\" "\\"House1110\\"")
<\/a>Still Standing<\/p><\/div>\n
The house is still in\u00a0one piece, well….the several pieces in which we left it. Autumn has arrived and\u00a0it appears that Carlos has fully exploited our absence by harvesting absolutely everything,\u00a0even the wind fallen apples which were in evidence\u00a0on our September visit. I suspect that he’s even got his eye on this ‘in-house’ fir tree (above)\u00a0as the centre piece for the Carlos family Christmas\u00a0decorations.<\/p>\n
<\/a>El burro esta bien<\/p><\/div>\n
The donkey is still living in our barn (little house) and seems to have put on a bit of weight since last time we saw him. I guess that he’s working less hard in the winter, and will have been finding more to eat since the grass which had been stripped by Carlos has now grown back to a munch-able level. Despite Mothers alarm at his mis-treatment he seems happy enough, although with our track record I wasn’t getting close enough\u00a0to him to find out whether he’d remembered that we are about to steal his barn (thank you 20x zoom on my trusty Canon G10<\/a>).<\/p>\n Now that's what I call a vacation<\/p><\/div>\n We spent a couple of nights in Ribadeo<\/a> at the wonderful (on weekdays)\u00a0Hotel Rolle<\/a>. During our stay we met up with Stephen and Kay <\/a>who are in the process of renovating a house twice the size of ours. We went for a meal with them but the best Pulperia in town was closed (see above) so they took us to another little gem of a place on the main\u00a0road through the town (Avenida de Galicia) where we feasted on chipirones, pulpo, grilled langostinos, croquetas and a tuna salad washed down with a couple of bottles of excellent house white.<\/p>\n A tourist trap with no tourists (except us)<\/p><\/div>\n Business complete in\u00a0Pontenova\/Ribadeo we’d decided to do the tourist thing for the last twenty-four hours of this trip. On the way to Oviedo we strayed 10km from the motorway to discover\u00a0the enchanting Castro de\u00a0Coa\u00f1a<\/a>, an ancient\u00a0Celtic hill top fortified settlement of over eighty round houses. We arrived around mid-day and had the whole site to ourselves, as the only other two cars in the car park belonged to the ladies running\u00a0 the excellent visitors centre. Stunning.<\/p>\n Heart of the medieval town<\/p><\/div>\n We spent the last night in Oviedo<\/a>, a beautiful, friendly town about 30km inland for Asturias Airport. The medieval old centre survived the Spanish Civil War <\/a>and comprises narrow pedestrianised streets and grand buildings.\u00a0Due north\u00a0of the Cathedral is\u00a0Calle de Gascona<\/a> where the speciality is\u00a0a foul tasting vinegar like cider (sidra) poured from above the waiters head into a glass held around their knees, all without looking (I’ll put a video up later). Needless to say most of it ends up on the increasingly wet an sticky marble floor and despite its unpleasant taste, the spectacle and theatre of it demands that you have\u00a0more than one.<\/p>\n That’s your whistle -stop tour. Much more to follow over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saturday afternoon saw a melancholic return from Galicia after a fruitful and interesting, although far too short, visit to the house. We managed to cram loads into\u00a0the seventy-two hours we spent in our little piece of paradise, in what was … Continue reading <\/a><\/a><\/a>