Another View of The Library...

I love this room...

Of all the spaces at the House of the Little Fox off the Camino de Santiago this one is the place to unwind. There is music, a TV set up for dvds and videos and hundreds of books many of them related to the Camino or other "spiritual" issues. The Freudian couch was an heirloom from the previous owner - and who better than me to continue its home...

Get the kinks out of your back with the massage machine in this room - and the kinks out of your mind. I'll bet you still have one or two...

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The Hearth of the Matter...

Toast your toeses here...

Common Areas: Downstairs...

Great spot to put your feet up and watch the TV. Or just to put your feet up...

Did you remember your cup of tea?
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The Library/ La biblioteca...

Just a few of the many books you might enjoy. This is the ultimate Chill Out room with a back massager (sounds SO commercial!), music, video, internet, and of course the library. It is surely my favourite room in the house. It may very well be yours too..
I did tell you there are over 300 videos and DVDS???
My favourite? Field of Dreams...
"If you build it, they will come...".

and more...

Not Forgotten...!

YOU, that is! It is You that is not forgotten and what kind of convoluted introduction is that!

As for me, some might say I am in a forgotten part of the world, but it isn't true. The myth of Galicia - its weather anyway - is just that: a myth. Today was glorious and to be honest that has been the way it has been since I moved here just over a month ago.

I've had no internet. Or telephone lines.Now I have two - telephone lines that is, but you don't want to know.

Anyway, A Casa do Raposito (The Little Fox House) is finally ready to receive pilgrim visitors and over the next few weeks I hope to tell you about not just the local history and mystery as I have been doing, but also this area and what magic brought me here.

This refuge is now - officially blessed only this morning by my first pilgrim who knows what she is doing - a pilgrim "sanctuary". I use the word guardedly: it is a retreat, a "half way house", a place for pilgrims who have already gained their Compostela to pass three to five days thinking about what they have achieved in their pilgrimage in peace and comfort and silence and friendship and an extraordinary natural beauty everywhere around. It is also \a place to give back: the church across the road, for instance, desperately needs its garden restored as there is talk of paving it over! The Little Fox House is most specifically non-religious and any, all, or no faiths are present here. But one thing I can guarantee is a sense of "warmth": even the name of the village: Carantona (that is Carantonya but this computer lacks an enye), means "a caress"!

I have only really had internet since last Friday so won't try to recoup everything here. I am going to try to upload a photo or two. Believe me, this is a special place... It called me, and I came and left much behind from a lifestyle many of us now are rejecting. Now it waits for you...

P.S. The House of the Little Fox is my private (and only) home: it is most specifically not an albergue. All is totally donativo and your donations will go towards securing it as a place of peace for pilgrims in years to come, as I shall be applying for a mortgage within three years.
I am a bloody good cook too!
More wine, anyone???
Apples..?
Cheese?
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The Story of Man: Manfred Gnädinger

Here on the Costa del Sol it is 20 degrees today and the tourists are out in T-shirts. I dress rather more appropriately to what we call “winter”: a sweatshirt and a scarf tucked away. In Galicia it is not particularly cold, at least not in A Coruña: a very respectable 15 degrees. But the nighttime sees a drastic drop. I can see I’ll be lighting fires in the Casa of the Little Fox as soon as I get there, which is only days away now. Two degrees and no idea where my hot water bottle is.

Perhaps 8 klms north from Carantoña is the little fishing village of Camelle. It is remote, even for the Costa da Morte. Were it not for the Prestige oil spill disaster (more on this next blog), I doubt anyone would have heard of it. Even then, it was one of many whose fishermen saw their livelihood covered in layers of deadly “chapapote”: thick oil which devasted the wildlife and paralysed the fishing industry for miles and miles.

One resident did not make his living from the sea. In fact, he did not make a living – in the way you and I might consider it – at all. He lived a hermit’s life, tucked away at the end of the road which led from Camelle to the sea. His name was Manfred Gnädinger. Some say he died of a broken heart.

Manfred was born in south Germany in 1936. Who knows what brought him to Camelle in 1962, but whatever it was, he stayed until his death in 2002. When he arrived he was well-dressed and clearly educated. Perhaps it was his education which made him seek out company other than the fisherfolk: Manfred fell in love with the schoolteacher, but his advances were not reciprocated and in many ways we might say that this rebuff was the architect of the next 40 years of his life.

Some years later, having read extensively on the subject, Manfred became very sensitive to environmental issues. He built himself a small concrete hut on the spit and carved out a natural living for himself. In Manfred’s case this was quite literally: using the natural rocky shapes as his medium he began to sculpt the landscape around him into the shapes they suggested. He saw piles of stones, ever decreasing in size, chimeras in the sand; his own world grew around him in a fantasy forest of rock and spirals. He created from what the sea brought him: driftwood, animal remains, cork, net …

"I came here and built this to create my own world. I was looking for a place to be alone," Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.

"This is my world. I don't think like other people."

The people called him simply “O Aleman”, and later just “Man”. Manfred accepted this for the symbolism it represented. He read philosophy, deep ecology. Man was a strict vegetarian gathering what he was able to grow from his garden around the hut. No matter what the season, he wore only a loincloth and swam in the sea year round until well in his 50’s.

Not surprisingly, Man became a curiosity. People came from far and wide to visit him, and they were all welcomed, given notepaper and asked to write of their impressions, to do drawings for him. Thousands of these still exist. Man charged a token sum for visits to his “museum” and when he died his bank account revealed he had saved extensively. His last wishes are as controversial as he was: in some circles it is said that money was left so that his work and museum could be maintained after his death but to the present day, this has not happened. Other sources claim that Manfred wished his museum to be left as an everlasting symbol of the destruction it suffered as a result of the Prestige disaster. One thing is certain: after a severe storm in 2010, the hut is in disrepair: only a few visitors come to pay their respect to Man these days. But those who do, remember.

You see, one morning in November of 2002, Man woke up to find his world covered in oil. The devastation on his face – captured by one intrepid, though rather insensitive photographer – reminds one of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The realization tore out his heart and left him broken. Man was not a well man by this time: his bronchial system and circulation was dangerously debilitated and no doubt the shock of seeing his life’s work destroyed hastened his end. The pathway to his hut was so covered in oil that the local council gave him a pair of rubber boots, his only other items of clothing. But Man retreated into his house and there, it would appear, simply allowed himself to die of melancholy. His body was found a month after the disaster.

Man, the hermit, the visionary, perhaps the mad man..? But who are we to say who is mad and who is not? He was not forgotten by the people of Camelle with whom he had lived alongside for 40 years. The Camelle authorities organised and paid for his funeral, and hundreds of locals attended. Man became a unique human symbol of environmental catastrophe as his body was carried through the streets; even the national papers took up his story.

Thousands of birds and fish died in the aftermath of the oil spill, but Man was the only human victim.

“Nunca Mais” say the Gallegos: never again. The handling of the Prestige disaster by the government remains a topic of debate. Yet, Manfred’s sizable bequest still sits somewhere in a bank and his legacy crumbles, his statues disintegrate, his garden reverts to the sandy promontory that really it has always been. November 2012 marks the tenth anniversary both of the Prestige disaster and Man’s death. And he is by no means forgotten: even in the press running up to Christmas this year there were articles about him. Man’s story touched me deeply when I was taken to visit his museum first, and even more in the cold dawn of a Gallego December just two weeks ago. You see him there with his bedraggled beard and wise man locks. You see him at work. You see him in despair.

Perhaps now is the time for those who have asked for his museum to be restored to have their voices heard. I hope to be one of them.
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It Was a Dark and a Stormy Night…

Off the coast of Camariñas in the month of February 1890, the Costa da Morte lived up to its name.

The British cadet ship The Serpent was on route to Sierra Leone when she ran into the treacherous weather this coast of Galicia is still famous for. There were 179 young men aboard, some on their very first voyage. The rain fell in torrents and a sea mist obliterated the headland upon which stood the Cabo Villan lighthouse, at that time manually operated.

“We was three days out of Plymouth, sailing along at half speed. Most of the lads was below deck. As we began to make our way down to Cape Finisterre, the waves began to swell and crash over the leeward side. That started it: we got pushed nearer and nearer to the coast and the visibility was something rotten. Somehow we got turned around. We was about three miles out from Cape Villan and about a mile only from the land.‘Course, we didn’t know it then. We didn’t know where we was with the fog being so thick, see?”

Upon passing Cabo Trece, The Serpent ran aground on the treacherous Punta Boi..

The ship did not sink immediately; instead, pinned there by the tumultuous waves the sailors climbed unsteadily up on deck battered by a sea which would show them no mercy.

The commanding officer, Harry Leith Ross, a veteran of Her Majesty’s Navy, ordered the lowering of the lifeboats. The launch cannon was fired but the waves were so great that the projectile never reached land. Men were scrambling down into the lifeboats just as an enormous wave hit the ship broadsides and washed both the little craft and the men overboard. At that point the Commander’s voice could only just be heard: “Every man for himself!” he cried.

Some of the men had managed to put on their lifejackets, although only a very few. The Serpent remained wedged. Soon nothing and no-one remained on deck: the crew, the lifeboats and even the deck of the ship had simply been hurled aside by the force of the wall of water. All that remained were the six cannons pointing uselessly at an enemy which shot could not defeat.

First Seaman Edwin Burton here picks up the tale:

“There was only three of us: Gould the lifeboat captain, Luxton and me. Luxton managed to hold on to the rocks. I saw others around him try the same, but all were washed away. Luxton he was a strong one, to be sure, but even he was half-dead by the time he reached the shore. A big swell threw me against the body of Lacane, one of my shipmates. We slammed into each other trying to save ourselves. There was bodies all around us, some with the arms ripped away, with their heads just … gone. It were a gruesome sight.

“Somehow I was able to reach Luxton. We managed to reach some folks in the little parish just up from the shore: Xavina they told me it was called later. I looked back and saw Gould struggling in the water, but with so many out there, there was little we could do for him save get help as quick as we could, like. We got to a fisherman’s cottage and called the alarm. We was exhausted, I can tell you. He was ever such a good man: he gave us food and dry clothing and called others out to help. For most though, it was too late.”

Gould finally made it to land. Overnight, The Serpent broke in two. Forty Eight bodies washed up on the shore. Most were in their lifejackets but even so they were in a terrible shape: mutilated by the wrath of the ocean as it battered their lifeless bodies against the rocks. One of them was the Commander. Over the next few weeks, one hundred and twenty eight bodies finally made it back to land, all in an advanced state of decomposition.

Depending upon whom you talk to, there may have been a sinister motive for the sinking of The Serpent. According to writer Ramón Allegue in his book Mar Tenebroso, the English government needed to transfer a substantial amount of money to its Colonial army in South Africa: this was to secure the release of crews of other boats which had been captured by the enemy. The Serpent had another ship, The Lapwing, along with her as protection.

But wreckers didn’t just exist in the coasts off of Cornwall, a la Daphne du Maurier. Indeed, the Requeros, as they were known, were just as active and dangerous in Spain. Some were even in the pay of the landowners who stood to gain from any cargo washed ashore. It may then have been the Requeros who turned off the lights at Cabo Villan luring The Serpent and all her crew onto the rocks…

The Lapwing sped away for help and came back with another ship, The Sunfly. Between them, they managed to salvage a chest filled with gold coins.

But the second chest was never found.

After the shipwreck, the English Admiralty gave a rifle to the Parish priest of Xavina in gratitude for all his help. A gold clock was given to the Mayor of Camariñas and a barometer to the City Council: you can see the barometer still. It is embedded in a wall in the town’s centre and is signposted. The figurehead has been preserved as well

The bodies were buried close to where they lost their lives: today it is called simply The English Cemetary. It has its own eerie peace there on the headlands, and a chilling lesson when the winds raise the ocean along the Coast of Death. The cemetery is just north of Camariñas around the coast on the way to the fishing port of Camelle, which has its own story to tell, as you shall see later.

Until 1950, when an English ship passed this part of the coast, it shot a salvo as a sign of respect for the death of so many fine young men.
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Monte Neme and the Wolfram Mines...

One of the truly compelling things about moving to a new area is discovering all the little walks and passageways, all the roads you’ve never been down, all the little hidden gems to be discovered and uncovered. Even though I won’t be in residence in the Little Fox House for another 6 weeks, I have begun to do a virtual tour of the area ready to take pilgrims out to places they could never have had a chance to see from the bus! Since I am taking a bit of a break from researching The Dove and the Yellow Cross while waiting for St. James’ Rooster to make it onto the shelves (and packing!) I thought maybe you might like to learn a little bit too and so in the next few weeks I am going to explore here some of the places of the History and Mystery of the Coast of Death in Galicia… Once La Casa del Zorrito is up and running I hope to offer some of these tours to those of you who are interested.

One of these places involved the Nazi exploitation of a little town called Carballo.

In the First World War a mineral called wolfram was discovered in the Monte Neme close the area of the Costa da Morte. Wolfram was used to harden steel and not surprisingly became in great demand especially on the eve of WWII as the Germans were rebuilding the navy denied to them by the Treaty of Versailles. Since they foresaw that there would be difficulties obtaining wolfram from Burma and China, their usual sources of supply, the Nazis turned to Franco.

Wolfram is very scarce in Europe. Only areas of Portugal, some parts of Caceres in Extramadura and Galicia had it in any quantity. Hitler appealed to the Generalissimo for the authorisation to exploit the wolfram as compensation for economic and military help during the Spanish Civil War. Two virgin sites were opened up: Casaio and Carballo just south of A Corunna. The Germans then created a company in Vigo called the "Estudios y Explotaciones Mineras de Santa Tecla" and by the end of the Civil War the mines were already producing in great quantities.

The Galician Wolfram had a decisive importance for the Nazis. It was practically their only supply source. The Nazis needed the Galician Wolfram to harden the steel for their armament trades and supposedly neutral Galicia became a meeting place for Nazi agents willing to get the material at any cost. The price of the mineral skyrocketed to amounts far exceeding its pre-war limits and the scramble for the grey gold began in Monte Neme. Needless to say, mining fever brought all varieties of adventurers and speculators. More than 1000 workers needed to be housed in the golden days of wolfram. Some stole the wolfram to sell on the black market but the sentences were grim for those who were discovered!

Money was plentiful and the little city of Carballo grew more and more, doubling its 1500 inhabitants in 1940 to 3000 in only ten years.

Women played just as important a part in the mines as men did. Not only did they do domestic service, but they also moved the carts, separated the ore, and brought water to homes and factories until running water was introduced. They carried firewood and gorse brush to the ovens and driers. No doubt their children also played a part. No laws against child labour in those days: the only moral code was whether your family ate or starved.

The constant dust in the air led to many deaths, most notably by silicosis, the bane of all miners. Stealing and smuggling led to many a body being thrown down a shaft on a moonless night...

The wolfram was used to coat different weapons to ensure a greater strength. The demand from both the Germans and the English made the price go up to 200 pesetas per kilo, a sizable sum in those days. The close of the hostilies of World War II meant the end of this first mining fever, since prices fell as other countries' minerals became available once more. Other new sources were discovered such as a large mine in Bolivia with cheap labour. A second fever did break out in Carballo in the early fifties due to the war of Korea but with the end of that conflict, the whole Galician wolfram lost its importance.

The exploitation of Monte Neme continued on - in fact, for a long time right up to 1980 – but it never regained the splendor of the war times.

Even closer than Carballo for me in Carantona, at the end of the lovely coastal walk known as the Insua route, are the remains of the old Amparo mine located in the so called Campo do Turco. All now is overgrown, of course. The walk itself begins at a picnic area overlooking the Camarinas ria. A little further around and a small promontory opens out into a vista stretching all the way to the pilgrim town of Muxia just across the bay. If there is a perfect spot on earth just to sit and reflect on your Being, this has to be it. The mine workings are signposted in one place and the subsidence can easily be seen in others.

I don’t think I’d want to walk too far off the track though...

Next time: Shipwrecks of the Costa Morte, old and new.
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Age before beauty ...

A very short one today connected with the post below. This one I found by accident Googling for "Border Collies".

I love the Internet, don't you?






Something remains for me to do or dare
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear
For age is opportunity no less than youth itself,
but in another dress.
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day
Longfellow