Travels through History – Northern Spain – Vigo

This book is a travelogue about the cities of northern Spain.

I travelled to Valencia, Barcelona, Pamplona, Burgos, San Sebastian, Valladolid, Segovia, Leon, Gijon, Oviedo, Santiago de Compostela, Pontevedra, A Coruna, and Vigo on board the fast, modern trains of the Spanish railways.

Here is an excerpt about Vigo:

Vigo is the largest city in Galicia, the most north-western province of Spain. Vigo is arrayed along the sloping southern shoreline of its namesake ria or estuary. Over 300,000 people call Vigo home and it’s a lovely place to spend a couple of days exploring the sights as well as taking a ferry to the Iles de Cies in the mouth of the estuary.

Vigo is supposedly the largest fishing port in the world with around 5km of wharves where stocks are landed. If you love seafood then this is probably as good a place as there is in Spain to sample the fruits of the ocean. On the Rua de Pescaderia there are permanent granite tables where people sell fresh oysters on an almost daily basis. Fish is also sold at the Mercado de Pedra throughout the day and at stalls along the seafront early in the morning where the fish is fresh.

For an orientation to the geography of the area, it’s best to climb up the streets and staircases to the top of the city, called the Castro Park. This hill offers spectacular views over the city, the estuary and the Cíes Islands.

In the gardens of the castle, the visitor can see the remains of settlements from the Castreño or hillfort culture (dating between the 3rd Century BC and the 2nd Century AD), the steep walls of a seventeenth-century fortress, and monuments to the renowned mediaeval troubadour Martín Códax. There are three anchors in the gardens in memory of the Battle of Rande otherwise known as the The Battle of Vigo Bay.

This was a naval engagement fought on 23 October 1702 during the opening years of the War of the Spanish Succession. Admiral George Rooke received news that the Spanish treasure fleet from America, laden with silver and merchandise, had entered Vigo Bay. Rooke was convinced to attack the treasure ships, despite the fact that the vessels were protected by French ships-of-the-line.

The engagement was an overwhelming naval success for Rooke and his allies: the entire French escort fleet, under the command of Château-Renault, together with the Spanish galleons and transports under Manuel de Velasco, were either captured or destroyed. Yet because most of the treasure had been off-loaded before the attack, Rooke missed capturing the bulk of the silver and taking it back for Britain’s coffers.

From the castle gardens, head towards Rei Square, which contains the Town Hall, and then on to Paseo de Alfonso XII, where there is another fine lookout point over the estuary and the port. This street contains numerous examples of the city’s symbol, the olive tree. I continued along Poboadores and Anguía streets towards O Berbés, the old quarter of the fishermen which still preserves some of the typical houses, with arcades and archways. Nearby is the fish market and there are plenty of places to eat.

Teófilo Llorente Street leads to A Pedra Square, with its market and oyster sellers. I then headed along Oliva Street until I reached the Collegiate Church of Santa María, the Cathedral of Vigo. Afterwards, I continued to Almeida Square, which contains the fifteenth-century Casa Ceta and the Casa Pazos Figueroa, a Renaissance building from the sixteenth century, occupied by the Camões Institute.

I would recommend visiting the Museo do Mar de Galicia even though you will need a taxi to reach it. The museum is about 3 miles outside the city centre and should be visited. It might be worth asking the taxi to come back in two hours for you, as there aren’t any taxi ranks outside the museum and the bus seems to run on an irregular basis.

This museum is about the sea in Galicia and everything connected with it. Thus there are diving suits, anchors, whale skeletons, ship models, cruise line posters, small fishing boats, board games, and boats for children to play with in the bath, on display. There’s an in-depth analysis of how reliant Vigo has been on the sea with statistics such as 4345 people used to work in the sardine canning plants of Vigo when production was at its height. There’s a light house at the back and a small aquarium.

Ouseburn – Newcastle-upon-Tyne

An excerpt from the book: Travels through History – North-East England

At first I wondered whether I was going the correct way. I had started heading over the Byker viaduct but realised I should be heading down into the valley so I could make a visit to the Victoria Tunnel. It didn’t look too promising as I headed down a street lined with brick walls topped with barbed wire. There was plenty of graffiti and some broken glass.

But then I spotted what looked like a large sheep painted on a wall and smelled a faint whiff of what seemed like horses – in this suburban setting, surely not? I was wrong, because close by were Stepney Bank stables. The sheep was painted on the wall of The Ship Inn near to Ouseburn Farm and the Cluny live music venue. On the opposite side of the street from where I was standing was the recently opened Arch 2 Brewpub & Kitchen. A large lime kiln that had been half knocked down during World War II to stop it being used a signpost for German bombers stood near the Seven Stories centre for Children’s Books, which was opposite the office for the Victoria Tunnel guided tours. All of a sudden there was a lot to see and do.

In the way of the coincidental world a few nights later I saw the opening credits of a TV Series called Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and recognised the view of the lime kiln, the first time I’d ever known where that was.

The Stepney Bank stables are open 7 days a week to provide high quality riding lessons to both children and adults. They also operate as a charity providing opportunities for children and young people growing up in challenging situations to increase their confidence, develop their resilience and gain qualifications and experience that will enrich their lives. This applies to riders and the volunteers who work at the stables. Stepney Bank Stables is approved by the British Horse Society and the Association of British Riding Schools and are also a Pony Club Centre. This means they’ve passed rigorous checks to ensure that their horses, facilities and equipment are fit for purpose and that the staff are appropriately qualified and skilled.

There’s been a city farm in the Ouseburn Valley since 1976. Byker City Farm was set up by local people, who wanted children living in the city to have the chance of working with farm animals. Over the years, the farm grew from a caravan on the site of a derelict paint factory into a vibrant and popular green space. The farm was forced to close in 2002 when it was discovered the soil contained high levels of lead from the former paintworks.​ The land was cleaned up, the new visitors centre was built and the farm was renamed Ouseburn Farm. With the help of Tyne Housing Association and Newcastle City Council, the farm animals returned in September 2009, and here they are today. This is urban reclamation and regeneration at its finest and the educational possibilities are tremendous for the local children.

9 Greek Islands – Rhodes

I have written seven books about the history of places I have travelled to.

I travel because my own father always said he would travel after he’d retired, but he never got the chance because he died from cancer when he was 49. I travel for him when I go to places as well as for myself.

If you are interested in history and / or travel then you should check out these books. Please bear in mind the books are travelogues rather than travel guides and so cover the places I visited and the experiences I had. 

Greek Islands

This book keeps it simple and covers nine Greek Islands: Rhodes, Symi, Patmos, Samos, Syros, Paros, Tinos, Delos, and Mykonos. They are all different and all lovely.

This is an excerpt on Rhodes.

Visiting the old town of Rhodes is a memorable experience as there are historical sights from different eras rubbing shoulders with each other at every turn. Most of the old town is medieval and was built in the 14th Century by the Knights Hospitaller. The old town became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988 and is an incredibly popular place to visit. Indeed, when a cruise ship arrives in the harbour, avoid the main arterial streets, Sokratous and Ippoton, and head south into the warren of cobbled alleys where there are fewer shops and restaurants, and discover the many interesting sights of this area, not all of which are mentioned in guidebooks.

Starting in the north-west of the Old Town, the first major sight the visitor comes across is the Palace of the Grand Masters, which was rebuilt by the Italians after an ammunition explosion destroyed the original building in 1856. The idea was that the reconstructed Palace would be an ideal place for Mussolini to spend time during the summer, but he never came near the place. The outside appearance is true to the original building, as authentic medieval plans were used in the reconstruction, but the same can’t be said for the inside, which was designed to make a Fascist dictator feel at home.

In front of the restored palace, the Street of the Knights heads due eastwards towards the sea. Known as Ippoton, this street housed several of the Inns where the Knights were housed, based on their ethnic and linguistic background. Knights from Provence were based at the Inn of Provence on Ippoton. Also housed on Ippoton were Knights from France at the Inn of France. The Inn of The Auvergne and the Inn of England are found on the street called Appelou, which intersects with Ippoton at the Archaeological Museum.

This Museum is housed in an airy building, formerly the Knight’s Hospital. It’s not hard to like a museum where the staff have gone to the trouble of stacking the cannon balls into pyramids. The main objects of interest, for me at least, mostly dated from the 6th-Century BC. Faience vases in the form of hedgehogs, tweezers and cheese graters, terracotta donkeys, and a faience pendant of a lion, no bigger than a thumbnail. Also of great interest were objects from nearby civilisations including figurines of the Egyptian gods Bes, Thoth, and Horus looking like Aztec gods, bedecked as they were with feathers.      

Travels through History – Northern Spain – Pontevedra

This book is a travelogue about the cities of northern Spain.

I travelled to Valencia, Barcelona, Pamplona, Burgos, San Sebastian, Valladolid, Segovia, Leon, Gijon, Oviedo, Santiago de Compostela, Pontevedra, A Coruna, and Vigo on board the fast, modern trains of the Spanish railways.

Here is an excerpt about Pontevedra:

Pontevedra is well worth a night’s stop if you’re travelling between Santiago de Compostela and Vigo. The main attraction for me was that traffic is banished from most of the city centre. The current mayor first came into office in 1999 and his philosophy was simple: private property – the car – should not occupy the public space.  Within a month, he had pedestrianised all 300,000 square metres of the zona monumental – the medieval centre, paving the streets with granite flagstones.

Cars were stopped from crossing the city and street parking was banned – people looking for places to park causes the most congestion. All surface car parks in the centre were closed and underground ones were opened, with 1,686 free places. Traffic lights were removed in favour of roundabouts, and traffic calming measures were introduced in the outer zones to bring the speed limit down to 30km/h.

The benefits were and continue to be many. 30 people died in traffic accidents from 1996 to 2006, but there have been no fatalities since 2009. CO2 emissions are down 70%. Three-quarters of what were car journeys are now made on foot or by bicycle, and central Pontevedra has gained 12,000 new inhabitants, whereas the tendency in Galicia is for towns to be losing people. Small businesses have managed to stay afloat because passers-by are on foot rather than in cars and so can window shop and pop into a store to make a quick purchase or by an item to drink or eat. I witnessed the same effect in Athens in Greece. People can be more attentive to their surroundings rather than watching out for cars and making sure they don’t bump into other people on the narrow pavement. There’s more room to breathe and the air is less full of pollutants and toxic fumes from stationary vehicles making the atmosphere more pleasant.

Before this scheme came into effect, more cars passed through the city in a day than there were people living there. Now, most people, like me, walk everywhere. This additional exercise will benefit people’s health and I didn’t see very many overweight people during my stay.

Two adjoining squares, the Praza da Peregrina and the Praza da Ferreira are well worth seeing. In the Praza da Peregrina stands the chapel, the Santuario de la Peregrina, for travellers on their way to Santiago de Compostela. The floor plan is in the shape of a scallop shell and the building is built in the Baroque style.

The Praza da Ferreira shows the benefits of the pedestrianisation of the city. There are arcades, cafes, fountains, and gardens that can all be admired in peace along with the facade of the San Francisco church.

The Alameda is a promenade that takes you away from the centre towards the river. There are many splendid buildings here starting with the town hall or Casa Consistorial / Casa do Concello de Pontevedra, the ruins of the San Domingo church, the provincial council building for Pontevedra or the Pazo Provincial, followed by the administrative building for the provincial council or deputación Provincial de Pontevedra. Edificio Administrativo. There is also a statue of Christopher Columbus here. The flagship on his famous 1492 journey to the New World, the Santa Maria, was built in Pontevedra. 

9 Greek Islands – Mykonos

I have written seven books about the history of places I have travelled to.

I travel because my own father always said he would travel after he’d retired, but he never got the chance because he died from cancer when he was 49. I travel for him when I go to places as well as for myself.

If you are interested in history and / or travel then you should check out these books. Please bear in mind the books are travelogues rather than travel guides and so cover the places I visited and the experiences I had. 

Greek Islands

This book keeps it simple and covers nine Greek Islands: Rhodes, Symi, Patmos, Samos, Syros, Paros, Tinos, Delos, and Mykonos. They are all different and all lovely.

This is an excerpt on Mykonos.

It may seem strange to include Mykonos in a book about history, but there’s plenty of things of historical interest to see on this lovely island. In Mykonos town, there’s a Folklore Museum, an Archaeological Museum, and a Maritime Museum. There are the famous windmills and the area known as Little Venice where the houses come right up to the water’s edge. Lena’s House, next to the Maritime Museum, is a completely restored merchant house from over one hundred years ago.

There’s an interesting church called the Paraportiani, which means “Our Lady of the Side Gate” in Greek, as its doorway was found in the side gate of the entrance to the Kastro area. Construction of this church began in 1425, but wasn’t completed until the 17th century. This whitewashed church comprises five separate chapels which have been joined together: four chapels (dedicated to Saints Anargyroi, Anastasia, Eustathios, and Sozon) form the ground floor and the fifth chapel has been built above them.

On the waterfront near the Old Harbour is where you will find the Kazárma building, which provided accommodation for the soldiers of Manto Mavrogenous, a heroine of the Greek Revolution. The first floor served as her personal residence. When the war began, Manto went from Tinos to Mykonos and invited the leaders of the island to join the revolution. She equipped, manned and “privateered” at her own expense, two ships with which she pursued the pirates who attacked Mykonos and other islands of the Cyclades. On 22 October 1822, under her leadership the Mykonians repulsed the Ottoman Turks, who had debarked soldiers onto the island. Manto also equipped 150 men to campaign in the Peloponnese and sent forces and financial support to Samos, when the island was threatened by the Turks. Later, Mavrogenous sent another corps of fifty men to the Peloponnese, who took part in the Siege of Tripolitsa and the fall of the town to the Greek rebels. 

Alefkántra or “Little Venice” is an 18th century district, dominated by grand captains’ mansions with colourful balconies and stylish windows overlooking the waves as they crash onto the shore.  

Bio: I am a writer. I love writing creatively especially about subjects such as British traditions, where my made-up traditions are no less ridiculous than the real thing. A list of my books, both fictional and factual (about travel), can be found here.

Travels through History – Northern Spain – Gijon and Aviles

This book is a travelogue about the cities of northern Spain.

I travelled to Valencia, Barcelona, Pamplona, Burgos, San Sebastian, Valladolid, Segovia, Leon, Gijon, Oviedo, Santiago de Compostela, Pontevedra, A Coruna, and Vigo on board the fast, modern trains of the Spanish railways.

Here is an excerpt about Gijon and Aviles:

I wanted to travel by train from Oviedo to the coastal cities of Gijon and Aviles. I knew there was a railway station in both cities and yet when I looked on the RENFE website there only seemed to be one train per day. This was most odd, so when I arrived at Oviedo bus station, I walked to the train station and checked the timetables. Sure enough, there were trains every 45 minutes between Oviedo and both Aviles and Gijon. I didn’t understand, but then I saw a ticket offering tickets on the local FEVE railway, a service run separately from the RENFE system. Problem solved. The next day, I caught the modern train to Gijon and the following day I went to Aviles.

Gijon is the largest city in Asturias, with over 275,000 inhabitants. A lot of the city was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War and there’s a famous story about a colonel in Franco’s forces who ordered his navy to shell the barracks where he was under attack from local miners armed with dynamite. The railway station is about a mile south of the headland called Cimadevilla which juts into the Bay of Biscay. This headland has a narrow neck between the harbour to the West and the Playa de San Lorenzo to the East and most of the interesting sights are in this area.

The Plaza del Marques sits next to the sheltered harbour where the yachts bob up and down on the slight swell. To the landward side, most of the cafes and restaurants in the square have a great view of the Palacio de Revillagigedo, which dominates the square with its mixture of neo-Baroque and neo-Renaissance architectural styles.

Further to the east is the Town Hall, and then the Campo Valdes area with its Roman Baths found when the authorities were attempting to build an underground car park. These ruins are in front of the San Pedro church round the back of which visitors have a great view of the Bay of Biscay. Even in the calmest weather, the waves suffice for paddle-boarders to get some decent exercise, watched by the people on the Playa de San Lorenzo, which stretches for 2km around the city bay from the church. This is the city beach and can become busy at the weekend in the summer.

Just to the west is the Museo Casa Natal de Jovellanos. Gaspar Melchior de Jovellanos was a leading of the Spanish Age of Enlightenment who was born in Gijon in 1744 and in his time was a statesman, author, and philosopher. The Bagpipe Museum is across the Rio Piles from the Estadio El Molinón, or more correctly Estadio El Molinón-Enrique Castro “Quini”, the home ground of Real Sporting de Gijón currently playing in the Spanish second division.

The train journey to Aviles takes a similar length of time as the trip to Gijon. Aviles is much smaller than Gijon but is still well worth a good look around, especially the Centro Oscar Niemayer on a former industrial site on the left bank of the Aviles river. The centre comprises three buildings; A dome, a tower encircled by a staircase and a long curved structure, all of which were intended to do for Aviles what the Guggenheim Museum did for Bilbao. I think it’s fair to say that this has not happened, but I had at least ventured there, though I was the only person looking around on a weekday in September. The centre opened in 2010 and has been in financial trouble during some of its history. Oscar Niemeyer’s vision was based on three themes: education, culture, and peace. Apart from its cultural purposes, the Centre was intended as a catalyst for large-scale urban regeneration that would change the town’s whole waterfront. I thought this hadn’t happened yet.  

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