spain + portugal 6: to salamanca, léon and home

We crossed out of Portugal into Castillo y León and the vast high plateau of the interior. Good farming country no doubt but not very exciting, although less arid here than further south. The plain in Spain is mainly rather … plain! But then we arrived in Salamanca, probably one of the most interesting and beautiful cities of Spain or indeed Europe. Built almost entirely out of a very fine local sandstone that carves well (and preserves in the dry climate) this was one of the four or five great medieval centres of learning in Europe. It still hums with students today, thronging the gothic and baroque buildings of the ancient university.

      It is a city filled with vast institutions, religious and secular, and all in this honey coloured stone, intricately carved, that gives a unity to the whole city, which well deserves its world heritage status. The defensive walls are still largely in place, and a Roman era bridge spans the wide river and flood plain to the south. There are two cathedrals: the jewel like Romanesque building, retained when they built a new much grander edifice beside it, turning the Catedral Vieja effectively into a vast side chapel. What a beautiful survival from this era, almost a thousand years old, a spare, well proportioned, with simple vaulting and strange animal carvings. We were lucky enough to attend a concert by an American university choir here.

      The main university building, with soaring spires and a huge baroque portico, almost outguns the cathedral in scale, but the pièce de résistance is the Plaza Mayor, the grandest of grand squares, full of people eating, drinking, cycling, meeting up, having chance encounters and just generally being very Spanish. Lots of groups all just talking at the same time, gesticulating and generally enjoying life.

      We stayed in a former palace opposite the Convento de San Esteban, yet another magnificent complex. It has a fine transitional church with a huge choir that accommodated over a hundred monks; and a two storey cloister, full of wheeling screaming swallows and nesting storks. It's obvious the Dominicans who built it didn't stint themselves like other orders. This was perhaps the most impressive of many splendours.

      Our final stop was in León, a smaller city, like a more modest version of Salamanca, with a slightly ramshackle Plaza Mayor, and busy narrow streets in the old town, including some excellent tapas places around the Plaza de San Martin. We sat there on Friday evening as it rapidly filled up with locals, starting their weekend in good spirits. There is a surprising amount of the Roman wall surviving, and a very fine Romanesque basilica, San Isidro. The cathedral has some of the best stained glass in the world, dating back to the 13th century, and there is the magnificent Convento de San Marcos, now a parador, which is where we stayed. Its vast public rooms, a cloister, and riverside terrace make this a great place to stay, although the restaurant was disappointing.

      But it was beginning to feel like the end, and a good time to return home. We travelled on quiet roads in the foothills of the Picos, past abandoned coal mines, but mostly through lovely countryside, then the narrow gorge that cuts right through the mountains. We stopped off at Potes, a charming mountain village clinging to both sides of a steep valley, then the quick run back into Santander, the ferry, and home.

spain + portugal 5: o porto and the douro valley

From here we headed towards Portugal, stopping off for a very good lunch at the parador in Pontevedra. We broke our journey in a quiet beach town called Baiona, where we stayed in a little family run hotel with a very chatty lady owner, who had lived in England when younger and was keen to practice her English. Her tiny daughter was very entertaining. Another rather fine sweep of sand here, a popular weekend destination from nearby Vigo, and with an imposing castle on a headland — now a parador — and a view to the Islas Cies. We decided to picnic on the beach and watch the sun go down.

      Next day, at the very last town before Portugal, A Guarda, we drove up a vertiginous hill with many hairpin bends to the top of a mini-mountain, Monte Santa Trega, with fantastic sweeping views of the Miño valley, which forms the border. Here there is an elaborate early Celtic hill fort/town, with the remains of tightly packed stone walled circular houses, part of the Castro culture, which existed across north-western Iberia from the 9th to the 1st centuries BC. A few houses have been reconstructed to show what their their timber and thatch roofs would be like – in shape much like similar timber constructions in the UK from that period. Clouds drifted through the valley far below. Quite magical, but the road up was a bit much for Ian's acrophobia and I had to drive down, very slowly, while he kept his eyes shut.

      So, to O Porto: a vertiginous city, clinging to the steep canyon sides of the River Douro valley, where every street is a major hill. It is a spectacular setting, and the famous two level bridge is impressive, but all in all we were slightly disappointed. Even though it is a world heritage site, the old heart of the city has a lot of dereliction, probably because it is unsuitable for a modern way of life. There seems to be a determined effort to improve things, with a lot of building work going on, but still many empty buildings, some even collapsed or roofless. And below, the river wharves are over touristy, with a lot of touting for mediocre tourist menus and attractions. Our hotel was up near the station at the top of the town, in what used to be the main post office, and did a lot of walking – I'm sure my calf muscles doubled in size with all those slopes. There are some fine buildings and sights, including the cathedral, Sé, but like other buildings here, its interior tends to the over elaborated, showing off the wealth plundered from South American colonies. São Francisco is an even more extreme example: a spare and well proportioned Romanesque building utterly buried in gold statuary and architectural confection.

      We spent a lot of time in the university quarter, which is a bit calmer, with some nice bars, where we watched a waiter covering about 20 tables with incredible efficiency, sometimes carrying four or five full dinner plates. Across the bridge are the old port wine warehouses and barges that used to bring the wine barrels down the valley to be fortified here. On top of the hill in the Vila Nova district is the rather fine old monastery of Serra de Pilar, with an unusual circular cloister, and great views back to the old town.

Next day we took off and had a quick look at the nearby beaches, which are very extensive and a more popular place to live nowadays. Then it was off up the Douro, where we had booked into a B+B above the little town of Mesão Frio. This was a very comfortable, modern villa with a very friendly owner and just five rooms. A terrace had a huge panoramic view over the valley and the town.

We ate in a local restaurant recommended by the hotel: we would never have tried it, having to run the gauntlet of a bar full of old farmers in the midst of a violent political argument, but upstairs was a little haven of home cooking, in a room probably unchanged since the 1950s.

      After an evening of heavy rain, the next day was sunny and we did a short tour of the region, on hairpinned, switchback roads, visiting the hill town of Lamego and the pretty river port town of Pinhão at the start of the wine country. This is where the barges set off for O Porto and is now the destination for big river cruise boats. Later we saw one of these passing through a huge lock in the river downstream. So rather a lightning tour of northern Portugal: the countryside more interesting in general terms than the city and would be worth visiting again with more time.

spain + portugal 4: to santiago de compostela

     

In the ninth century, a body was found in a cave that was held by the local bishop to be that of Saint James, and this became a rallying point for the Galicians in their battles with the Moors. He is even said to have risen up and joined the battle himself. Pretty soon an elaborate legend built up around Santiago, and the place where his body was found, Compostela, became Europe's greatest centre of pilgrimage, which did very nicely for the Galician economy.      

     Ever since, it has been a city of religious tourism, with a vast cathedral, major monasteries of all the sects, and great marshalling areas to control the crowds of pilgrims.

      We had encountered little straggles of pilgrims all along the way from Santander, and more were here. Mostly retirement age, with the latest all weather gear and hi-tech walking poles, but some were with the more traditional wooden staves. All fix a scallop shell ('coquille St-Jacques’ in French) to their rucksacks to symbolise the pilgrimage.

There are several routes for the Camino Santiago, and we mostly encountered parts of the 'French way', although later we came across other routes from the south. It's said that 100,000 complete this every year, not all for religious reasons – for many it's just a physical challenge. You have to do at least 100km on foot to get the official certificate.

      And when we got to Santiago, there they were: little groups of euphoric/exhausted people, boots off, staring in wonder at the buildings, or queuing up to get their certificates, or just lying flat out on the ancient flagstones of the Praza do Obradoiro.

This is a vast square in front of the west entrance of the cathedral and surrounded by other imposing institutional buildings of various periods. There is the wide facade of the pilgrims' hospital in elaborate transitional style, provided by Ferdinand and Isabella, and an equally impressive classical town hall. We stayed in a small, friendly hotel in a narrow colonnaded street, right by the cathedral, with massive stone walls and a pavement cafe for breakfast.

      Very much a tourist town since medieval times, the streets are full of religious gift shops and restaurants with special pilgrims' menus (you can get these all along the Camino if you can show you are a bona fide pilgrim). Portions tend to the enormous and we seriously over ordered at one place, mistaking mains for tapas plates.

The cathedral itself, extended over and over, is like a huge dark cave complex. At its heart the original romanesque aisles remain, austerely simple and beautiful, compared with the later over elaborate external additions. There is also a shady park on a hill facing the old town, a popular place to stroll and admire the view.