Local bus to O Grove
€1.35 for a local bus ticket and 35 minutes later we are in O Grove, another little fishing village but the difference with O Grove is that it has a small bridge to an island, Illa do Toxa.
Needs must.....with a sore foot we decided to take one of those little tourist train things that tootles along around the sites, €5 and 40 mins later I was glad we did, my sore foot wouldn't have coped, ( normally we wouldn't be seen dead doing anything like this and just hike it😊).
Legend goes way back a fisherman left his donkey for dead on the island and when he came back the donkey was alive and well, this was attributed to the mineral fed spring.... jump forward 100 years and there is now a spa hotel from the 1900s,(think Belle epoch era) a golf course and some luxury homes tucked away amidst the pine forests. There are even a couple of token donkey's still on the island.
Much of the island is parkland and protected and if my foot was better we would have hiked the tracks around the foreshore. There are scallop beds aplenty that are harvested at a certain time of year and there is a church, Igrlesia de la Concha's, made entirely of scallop shells.
The O Grove fishing fleet is still active and in addition to scallops there are many mussel barges and it looks like a lot of octopus pots are set too.
Bus in the other direction to Combarro
I must say these local buses are fantastic, cheap as chips, go to most places and the drivers are great. The buses are big mercedes type things and it's a very comfy ride, high up seeing all the gardens and beaches. We spent a couple of hours just wandering around the tiny historic fishing village of Combarro. The town has many 18th century crucero monumento around the village and of course the ancient granary stores mentioned in an earlier post. We found some ancient fishing boats too👍
More pics tomorrow.
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