Next Stop Galicia - A Jewel Of Surfing, Unpolished And Raw

It's crazy how time flies. It feels like we've actually just came back from our Europe road trip. I haven't even written and published all my post's about this trip yet…!!!???

Well, before we gonna make our next trip with Lenny to Fuerteventura for Christmas, today I will tell you about our next destination we visited on our Europe trip.

Our next stop led us to the end of the northwest edge of Spain, specifically to the province of Galicia, which is a real surfer's jewel, unpolished and wild. Galicia is not only known for pilgrims on their way to the capital Santiago de Compostela, but also a place of longing for many surfers.

This area is full of excellent beach, reef and pointbreaks and has maintained an image as a discovery area due to its amazing versatile landscape and its exposed position to the North Atlantic makes it an excellent location to get through to the low-swell summer in Europe.

We spent a solid week on the coast, just a few kilometers from Ferrol, which is an old industrial and fishing town and probably rather the last on the travel-bucketlist when you ask a surfer about the best surf destinations on the Atlantic coast of Europe. But Doniños beach is actually one of the best beachbreaks in Europe. Check out yourself on the following pics. Those images say it all. We had also some smaller days when I have dared to go out.

In addition, the beach breaks of the region are oriented in all possible directions and so pretty flexible. Like for example the beach of San Xorxu. A Long bay with a beachbreak, which is shielded by wind, variable and a popular longboarder spot with small waves. But also an excellent bodyboarder spot when there is big swell.

Our campsite for the next 5 nights was located between Lobadiz beach and Doniños beach, next to Castro de Lobadiz and at the edge of the pine forest de San Xurxo.

We had the opportunity to set up our camp next to the pines, which ends at a big grassland area that extended to the cliffs. To the Doniños beach we needed a 10-15 minuets walk through the pine and grassland areas.

Due to the crowded line-ups during the summer days, we always got up very early in the morning and had a pre-breakfast session. Every morning the forest was covered with early morning mist and gave us, when the sun slowly started to shine through the trees, a fairy tale scenery. Every evening we also had stunning sunsets, which each of them were our highlight.

Not only the sunsets were magical but also the starry nights, because exactly on those nights we had the so-called shooting star nights, where we were allowed to see almost every evening at least 5 shooting stars.

From Monday to Thursday we had some really nice privacy, although some campers were already parking between the clearings in the woods, but everybody was nice and quiet. On weekends from Friday on more and more people came to camp and even to make party, which was luckily our last night before we moved on.

Since Ferrol was only 20 minutes by car, we could fill up our water and food supplies in between. Because on that campsite we cooked a lot ourselves. We made wraps with falafel, pasta with mozzarella-sauce, chilly con carne and homemade pizza, whereby the pizza was quiet time consuming. But everything very delicious.

Once Jess and me went with the stand-up boards paddling along the coast line towards Doniños beach and the guys followed us with the drone. Since we have often seen dolphins nearby the coast during our walks to the beach, we had also kept watching out this morning and we were allowed to see them again. They were very shy and when they were next to us they immediately swam away. Often they were even close to us and we didn’t notice them. However, the boys could watch everything well with the drone and they even captured a shot where the dolphins and us can bee seen. For me it's really special to meet dolphins in their natural habitat. That’s why it was a great experience which I won't forget.

After this time we went different ways. Daniell's brother and his girlfriend went slowly back home and we stayed a few days more in that area. With our Land Cruiser we still wanted to try out some campsites where it was only accessible by 4x4. Why do we have such a car like this!? So we found a beautiful and remote place directly on top of a cliff, which I will show you next time.

For now, I would like to wish you Merry Christmas and peaceful holidays.

Enjoy,

Katy

Pics by Daniell Bohnhof & Xaver Bohnhof

Text by me Look2 Ocean