The road to Cabo Ortegal
Two days, one wrong turn, and the greenest coast in Galicia — a slow drive to the cliffs where Spain runs out.
The map said three hours. The map was optimistic. It always is, on roads like this — single-lane, hedged in on both sides, the kind that make you slow down whether you meant to or not.
Leaving the motorway
You feel the change the moment you turn off. The signage thins out. The radio loses the city stations one by one. By the second village the only traffic is a tractor and a dog that clearly owns the road.
The wrong turn
Somewhere past Ortigueira I missed a junction and spent forty minutes on a track that ended at a gate and a field of astonished cows. It was the best wrong turn of the trip. The light was doing something to the hills I have been trying to describe ever since.
Where Spain runs out
Cabo Ortegal is not the westernmost point of anything. It is not the most famous cape on this coast. But stand at the rail with the wind coming straight off the Atlantic and you understand why people drive two days for it. The cliffs fall three hundred metres to the water. The horizon is a single clean line. There is nothing between you and Newfoundland.
I stayed until the light went. Then I drove back the slow way, on purpose.
