I'm missing the road *alot*. It's hard to believe I'm no longer travelling. In eleven days I'll be picking Jamie up from the airport in Melbourne, and in 37 days we'll be back in our house, tending our garden, our chickens, and quite possibly a new Land Rover - or a newly purchased old one. As much as I am looking forward to this, I'm looking forward to being back on the road in Europe again more. 

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By the time we got to Galicia, I realised that our travels had been like a series of consecutive really, really good Sunday drives to a new place. It was the driving I liked. The constant motion. We're not one for sitting on beaches for days. Sometimes, on this road trip, we longed for a holiday - to relax, to not think about where we'd sleep that night. This never took much to fix - a night in one place was usually enough, perhaps a long lazy morning in bed, watching the view, having a few coffees and a leisurely breakfast, which sometimes was no more than peanut butter on a baguette. 

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The Galician coast was a nice way to complete our journey. Of course, we wanted longer, but the slow roads and rural tracks were gentle on us, and it was easy to find a place to camp relatively alone. This carpark was fairly quiet - we did have a motorhome park right in front of our view but luckily some polite words had him shift over. We're constantly surprised at people's lack of situational awareness or consideration of others. 

The Galician coast is fingerlings of land touching the sea - it's always offshore somewhere and there's always a beach just visible from the highway. There's *meant* to be surf all summer here because of the way the land is, though there wasn't much whilst we were there. It's famous for it's rugged coastline and wild beaches, and of course the UNESCO pilgrimmage site of Santiago de Compostela. Looking at the map now I'm suprised we didn't divert to see it, but that wasn't the trip we were on. 

[//]:# (!worldmappin 43.33750 lat -8.92960 long Memories of Galicia d3scr)
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[Image Source](https://www.bing.com/maps?q=galicia+coast&FORM=HDRSC7&cp=42.872097%7E-8.113308&lvl=7.9)

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At lot of this section of coast reminded me of the rural backroads to huge beaches back home. There's a lot of farms and not much else - Galicia seems a little cut off from the rest of Europe in that way. It's yet to become a surfing mecca like Portugal - though that's coming - and it's not full of resorts like the Algarve or the rest of Spain. 

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Here, in Australia, it's almost impossible to explain even where Galicia is, unless you're mudmapping. It's not really on the tourist route, unless you're walking to Santiago de Compostela on the pilgrim trails from France or Portugal. *That*, people have heard of. But that's not for us - we didn't like the crowds, the sheep tracks of people 'finding themselves'. We tend to find ourselves in different ways, I guess. 

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We're not the only ones finding ourselves on the road. We join a tribe of the young, avoiding uni and jobs and in chase of adventure and freedom, the older boomers selling their houses to escape the rat race and live a cheaper life on the road, the people not much older than us that are fed up with work and worrying they've not got long to live, truly live. 

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I guess this idea is 'brought home' even more now, watching Dad die. There's never enough time. They had one good trip to Europe, and one out to England to see me get married in '04. They had a trip to New York, to the Cook Islands, to New Zealand and Japan. But there's never enough time - Dad still hallucinates he'll manage one last trip, though the reality his road is over is becoming more lucid as he goes. 

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Sometimes it's just because you're once a traveller, always a traveller. You can't actually stop this movement into new spaces, new experiences. You never grow out of it, grow up. You only grow old and less able to be on the road - either figuratively or literally. 

Reflecting on Galicia, I feel nothing but longing. I was aware of that in the moment, that each side road, beach, cafe, interaction was the last we'd have in this place, because there were other countries calling to us, other highways, by roads, tracks, and ways. 

At least I hope so, anyway. 

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# `With Love,` 


![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/riverflows/23t6xT1abr5kFMeEirKwZ2QqT6MK9U4SBpKCQZAjVEojgm7uSSGL9AJSuwtBsUmMAV5jv.png)







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