Camino Primitivo

Rest Day Grandas de Salime

September 10, 2023

 Our rest day is in a hotel which is 5 kms out of the town of Grandas de Salime.  It is a very small village and being a Sunday there is nothing open.  Never the less Maureen and Bob took a taxi into town with the  intent of walking back.  Probably a good choice as it is all up hill to Grandas de Salime.  I elected to hang around the hotel.  Not that there was anything to do here. Have a good nap was number one on my to do list.  

I did however walk down to the Grandas de Salime dam. It was a very nice day with not a breath of a breeze and sitting on the dam to have a snack of cookies and an apple was very pleasant.  

The dam itself was constructed in 1954 and completed in 1958.  At the time it was the second highest dam in Europe.  There was a great deal of difficulty in building the dam due to the remoteness and due to economic sanctions against the Franco government. It appeared that there were not going to be any turbines for the completion of the hydro station but the UK government secretly supplied the necessary equipment to complete the dam.  It is rated at 350 mega watts, however it does not appear to be operating as there is no water coming out of the power house.  

On the one side of the river are a lot of complicated and abandon concrete structures.  At first I thought they were of some sort of industrial operation which had been abandon.  However upon reading the history of the dam it would appear that they are the remainders of the complex cable car system which was used to transport the concrete to the dam.

As I was walking around I noticed that here were a lot of really large snails.  This example was probably close to 3 inches and his shell was 1.5 in diameter.  

An afternoon nap topped off the day. 

Tonight I am looking forward to the evening meal here in the hotel. Last nights meal was excellent.

Terry