In Galicia, Spain’s green and rain-kissed northwest, pilgrimage paths wind through vineyards and Atlantic air carries the scent of salt and woodsmoke. Several members have said they want to know more about this incredible destination where one of our upcoming trips is set. And at Club Avandra you ask, and we deliver.
There is something quietly subversive about Galicia. This is a place where history, hedonism and high spirits collide — best experienced on foot, with a glass in hand and Kathy Lette setting the tone.
While much of Spain performs for its visitors, this corner — all mossy stone, Celtic echoes and sea-lashed drama — simply gets on with being itself. The great arc of the Camino de Santiago ends here, in Santiago de Compostela, where for centuries pilgrims have arrived footsore and transformed. To walk even a fragment of the Portuguese Route is to tap into that deep current of history — but on this trip, you’ll find the spiritual is joyfully entwined with the sensual - and the downright hilarious.
Days start with the soft rhythm of boots on earth, strolling through eucalyptus groves, the slow reveal of cathedral spires. Feeling just the teenist bit pious? Don’t worry, we’ve got a remedy for that! A private evening at Nómade Santiago is not so much dinner as initiation — a closed-door affair where wine flows freely and stories flow faster, introduced by a host who treats you less like a guest and more like a co-conspirator.
This is the real luxury here: access. The sort that places you at kitchen tables and among the vines. In Leiro, Xulia Bande — a formidable figure in a traditionally male world — leads you through her vineyards before welcoming you into her home. Lunch is homemade, generous, and the kind of experience that feels both rare and entirely unforced. At Anónimas Viticultoras, the stories honour the women who history forgot.
Between these moments, Galicia will reveal itself: the thermal waters of Ourense, the granite grace of Pontevedra, the story-soaked headlands of Punta Faxilda where myth still clings to the cliffs. It is a place where the past is not preserved but lived — where pagan ritual and Catholic tradition sit comfortably side by side.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on the night of San Xoán - The Bonfire of St John - the pinnacle of the trip. As darkness falls, beaches flicker with firelight; “cacharelas” blaze against the Atlantic sky. This ancient midsummer ritual — part purification, part celebration — invites you to cast off the old and leap, quite literally, into the new. Nine jumps over the flames for luck, they say. Whether you believe it or not is beside the point. What matters is the feeling of total release: the heat on your skin, the laughter, the sense of being momentarily unmoored from the everyday.
By the time you reach Vigo — city lights shimmering across the estuary — Galicia will have worked its quiet magic. This is, ultimately, a trip about connection: to place, to people, to the simple pleasures of walking, talking, eating and drinking well. Or, as Kathy might put it, the holy quartet. And in Galicia, it feels nothing short of divine.
Price from £3,600 per person based on 6 people travelling. Find out more here.
