New extension to Teixido route, plus new Albergue at Covas

[Peter Robins]

A new north-western extension to the Camino de San Andres, from the coast at the 12th-century Ermida de Santa Comba to Ferrol, via Covas, Esmelle, Doniños and Brión, was opened last year, part of a rural development scheme. A new albergue has now also been opened in a former school at Covas http://www.idecom.es/Covas/Pdf/Diario080409.pdf

Either branches of the Teixido route could be used as an extension to the Camino Ingles, and the first pilgrims to stop in the new albergue, a group of Italians, stopped there at the weekend en route to Santiago. http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/ferrol/200 ... 873635.htm

There are some fine photos of the area around Sta Comba and the recent restoration of the Ermida on the website of the Sociedade Cultural Columba http://www.windsock.es/columba/

Seems to have just been coincidence, but the romeria to Sta Comba is on the last Sunday in July. The island can only be reached at low tide.

 

[familypilgrims]

It would certainly be a worthwhile walk, and quite important, as local legend has it that to San Andres de Teixido "vai do morto o que non foi do vivo", which means that you will go after death if you did not go while alive. The area surrounding the "ermita" is very atmospheric, in particular in the autumn and winter months, which is probably where the legends about lost souls wondering the hills come from. We spent a week in Cedeira after finishing the Ingles this August and we visited (our feet were not quite up to walking) the "ermita" and surrounding area. Teixido is a tiny village quite overrun by tacky tourist trap shops. The chapel is tiny but must have been connected to the Camino Ingles as it was in the hands of the Order of Malta for quite some time. Even on a sunny day in August the wind and cloud were phenomenal, as we drove along the road we were enveloped by cloud, the temperature dropped 5 degrees and we had to put our fog lights on. A couple of broken down vans on the side of the road had us thinking that the legends might well be true ... The area east of Teixido is also very interesting, with the highest cliffs in Europe (600 mts straight drop); there are also wild ponies roaming free. They are gathered once a year and there is a festival connected with this called "A rapa das bestas" which takes place on the first Sunday in July every year. Before the fog enveloped us we stopped at a view point with a nice "cruceiro" and a memorial to the pilots of the RAF partly financed by the Royal Green Jackets regiment. We found the first signs for the San Andres de Teixido path at San Martin de Xubia, the symbol is a fish as in the early christian catacombs. A pilgrim we met at Hospital de Bruma told us how he had gone down to the rocks at Teixido and collected a huge boulder to take to some nuns that he knew. The nuns could not go to San Andres so he thought he would take San Andres to them.