Belesar - Ourense - Lobios - PART I

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I have to start by saying that I have way too much material and too few hours to make a post for all the outings I've been doing lately so I'll start from the big and more interesting ones and take it from there, unfortunately some may never make it to the blog. We shall see how it goes. Bear in mind I'll be spending the last week of August in Cyprus, I am going to Alex and Skeve's wedding and I am pretty positve there'll be lots of interesting entries from that week. :-)

We were going to be three people David, Miguel and myself, in the end David couldn't come, as you can see (or read in this case) that didn't prevent Miguel and myself from having a great weekend...

I'll have to start this story by saying that we had a plan, I promise! we did! but everything went tits up and had to improvise on the move...

The original plan was to go on Saturday to the Sil Canyon (Sil is the name of a river) rent a Kayak and descend the river. Sounds like a cool plan doesn't it? well unfortunately they are doing some works upstream on a dam and they drained the river so now it's not a river, it's a stream...so should you attempt to descend the "river" by kayak you would have to have good broad sholders to carry the kayak with you all the way because when it comes to rowing... it's kinda hard without enough water...

We quickly came up with an alternative (suggested by my cousing Iván), we could go to one of the dams in the Miño river, rent a kayak and row for an hour or so up until an island where we would stop to have lunch and relax for the rest of the day...

Another great plan, isn't it? yeah...we thought so until we got there and realise we couldn't rent a kayak... so we ended up just walking around and taking pictures, although judge by yourself, the place is just breathtaking... had it have rice plantations instead of wine I would have thought we were in Vietnam!

Did you know there is a winter Saint Jack's Way? I had no idea...I thought there was only one way...until we found this sign:

(White tall sign), it says: Winter Track to Santiago

And for my surprise I also found a road sign worth taken my picture with. :-)

I wonder how many cars ended up in the river....

Then we went to the only beach by the river in the area

I must admit we found this beach quite disapointing, not only was tiny but the only bar and possible kayak rental place in the area was closed and it was 11:30 am... so we went on visiting the surronding areas...

Then we found an old water mill that had been restored and converted into a restaurant

And from the back of the water mill you can see how the water gets into the mill

Not bad!

By the time we finished with the water mill, we were kinda peckish so we started looking for a place where to eat , the water mill was one possibility but we kept wandering around and found a place I would totally recommend to anyone. Home cooking, well priced and as it is customary in Galicia... big portions...we almost had to walk sideways on our way out we were full and let me put that in bold, we were really full.

This is the name of the place in case anyone goes about that area:

We also went to visit the local dam

And that wasn't the only engineering marvel in the area, check this out:

After that, we had to take a decission as to what to do with the rest of the day. None of our original plans worked out so now we had no plan but at least we had a full stomach. O:-)




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