From the Geres National Park we drove much more quickly than usual - not by the speedometer, but the miles covered as we drove out of the rain and towards the Galician coast. We were diverting past something we thought would be pretty cool - the site of some neolithic rock carvings or petrogplyhs. The carvings on the rocks at Campo Lameiro Cave Paintings Archaeological Park are more than 4,000 years old, so we were pretty interested by the time we finally arrived and parked up at the entrance where there was a large modern museum and a cafe.
The museum itself was okay - it was more set up for people who didn't know much about life back then I suppose. There was a recreation of a hut, recreation of the stones, some recreation of people - you get the idea. Everything was written in Galician, so as far as we knew, everything we were seeing was a replica. There was absolutely no one around to ask, and in fact, we wouldn't see anyone until we entered the park and some woman came running up to ask us for the 3 euro fee to enter the park.
She did provide us with a map, but we were disappointed that as foreign visitors, we didn't really feel catered for. However, we did get a map and some instructions to find the rocks scattered over about 4 km. The park itself was very beautiful and we already got a sense of the Galician natural wilderness that was so very different to other parts of Spain - oaks, pine trees, bracken, blue mountains in the distance. One could imagine the place with howling wolves and deer roaming around. It certainly had sustained our long ago ancestors.
The first rock was - how do I put it? - very disappointing. We realised quickly the replicas had taken the very, very faint outlines and made them stand out again. We honestly stuggled to see the animals and labrinths in the rock below. In fact, we couldn't help but giggle. They had, after all, been around for 4,000 years and open to the weather.
Jamie began to do a running commentary. He imagined Og and his wife. The dialogue went somethign like this:
'Og, have you been hunting today?'
'No, I've just been doodling on these rocks honey'
'Oh okay. Well you do you - I'm busy feeding the kids, but by all means, you be an artist'
'Well I'm going to be famous one day - you wait and see!'
'Okay honey. But you might want to carve them a little deeper as you ain't getting no fame for 4000 years'
However, finally we got to see one that was pretty beautiful - a deer carved on a rock under the oak trees. You could also make out a labrinth.
This might be a clearer shot. With a bit of post production it could almost be a drawcard to lie to people about how good theses rock carvings actually are.
Gah, I sound so ungrateful and hard to please. I'm just kidding. Honestly, it's pretty amazing to think of people carving these 4,000 years ago and not tik-tokking about it.
You might be able to see the labrinth better in this one? I've always been fascinated by it. There's a few examples of these in southern europe - they've been dated to the iron age I think. There's a really cool one at Rocky Valley near Tintagel. They are just so fascinating. Why did they spread far and wide? Where did they originate? What was their meaning? If you're interested, here's a pdf of labrinths in Europe which is interesting.
After the disappointing rock park, as we decided to remember it, Our first stop was a caravan park as we were exhausted - and Buttercup was running really rough, which was going to be the story for the rest of the trip back to the UK.
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