Ría de Pontevedra : Pontevedra
We went back to the boat to get more petrol and embarked on a journey in the dinghy up the estuary/river to Pontevedra. It was getting windy and we were underdressed, I was quite worried about getting back without getting very cold. The journey took about an hour and apart from the marina past the first two bridges, it wasn’t obvious where to stop. When we had passed most of the town we turned back and stopped at the marina. We went into the Club Náutico which was also a sports centre for a coffee to warm up before starting to explore. The place was very well decorated in a new style with lots of great colours, glass and brickwork. The lady upstairs serving behind an empty bar turned out to be very friendly and to speak a fair amount of English, the first local we had met who could! The region Galicia seems to be frequented by very few British. She told us where to look for the old town, and a bit about her - she
used to live at La Coruña but prefers it at Pontevedra. She told us the answers to a few questions we had not yet been able to answer, and supplied us with titbits of complimentary food with the coffee which went down very well.
Then we made our way into the town and wandered the old streets until we came out onto a large new square, suddenly we saw many places there that we needed such as a photo shop, a telephone pay as you go top up shop, and a stationery shop where we bought a notebook which would serve as a nice logbook.
Later and we wandered through the park and then to a kids playground, which was very nice except for a horrible little girl who threw sand in Dan’s eyes, and later attempted to do it again, I slapped the girl on the arm and her cigarette-toting mother turned up looking daggers, I made it quite clear that this was the second time her precious girl had done this and she backed off.
Later we found a small café in the old streets for some tea, where we met the resident child called Carlos, who was playing outside the café with his football. He was a real showman and obviously watched and played football a lot, he must have been four. Dan played with him when he had finished his food, then practised on the little boy’s scooter but he couldn’t really get the hang of it without falling over.
Eventually we prised Dan away and went back to the dinghy. Luckily the wind had dropped and the tide was now going out so the return journey was fine.