Part 14: Lugo and Torre de Villademoro

20240524-25

The Trip

We spent one night in A Coruna.  The next morning we spent an hour exploring the sights close to the hotel and then headed inland to the southeast to the Walled City of Lugo.  From Lugo, we returned to the coast and continued east to a unique place that Kathleen found called "Torre de Villademoros".

The Photos

The photos below are what we saw.

In A Coruna, our hotel was out on a point and gave us a nice view of both the city and the coastline.  This part of the city has a nice stone walkway that follows the coastline.  Note the tall twin towers to the south across the bay.

A bit to the west was a field of stacked stones that had been notched to form windows.

With the rising sun behind me and a correct positioning I was able to see the Tower of Hercules through the carved window.

We got fuel in A Coruna and then headed to the southeast to the Walled City of Lugo.  The city walls were started by the Romans in the 1st century A.D. and have been maintained and preserved by subsequent rulers.  The current city within the walls is quite different than the city without.  Both have narrow streets, but the city within has vehicle prohibitions, resulting in a pedestrian plaza.  There were several gates into the city, and Kathleen found a gate that had parking right across the street.  We parked, dismounted and began our exploration.

The walls are tall and are made of stacked sheets of slate, as opposed to the cut granite frequently seen in other castles.

Inside the walls, shops and homes filled every square meter.

The walls have a set of stairs that provide access to the top of the walls for defense so we went to check it out.  You can walk around the entire inner city on the top of the walls.

From the top of the walls, we could see the (really tight) underground parking for the area.  There is a supermarket on the ground floor, parking below and apartments above.

Kathleen took many photos from the top of the walls.

Even outside the walls, not all buildings had been maintained.  Some of the worst had roof collapses that rendered them unusable.  Buildings on either side were currently in use.

On the top there were remnants of another kind of portal.  It was lunch time, we were hungry so we returned to the ground level and found an awesome sidewalk cafe that had some of the best food we have experienced thus far on this trip.  It was a 3 course tasting menu of pibil pork tacos with pico de gallo, salmon fillet and homemade torta de queso.  Excellent!

The story of this photo is the woman with the broom.  Old structures decay day by day.  In this case, the wall bleeds sand and pebbles that spall-off due to freeze-thaw and thermal expansion.  Her sole mission is to sweep up the debris that is produced by this process to keep the walkways clean and clear.  She has a job for life.

We finished lunch in Lugo and had a white-knuckle ride through the city to get to the motorway.  We traveled east several hours to our destination for the night: Torre de Villademoros.  To get there required travel on some really tight walled roads that wound through farmland.  The trip was worth it as we arrived at the Torre (tower).  Kathleen had booked the tower room for us; Steve got a conventional room inside the main hotel.  Access to the tower was difficult due to the requirement to haul our stuff up multiple flights of stairs.  But, we prevailed.

The bedroom on the "first" floor was impressive.  Stairs led up to the living room upstairs and to the roof overlook above.

The windows were the original portals retrofitted with modern dual-pain glass.

The bathroom was contemporary with the currently-en-vogue countertop sink basins.

Rather odd toilet and bidet, but the shower was nice.

We had the foresight to purchase several bottles of local wine while in the supermarket in Lugo.  The room had an opener and glasses, so we attacked with full force.

Dinner at the hotel was magnificent.  We had a great night and the following morning we checked out and headed north on the tight country roads to see the beach cliffs.  The tide was out when we arrived, but we could see folks on the beach.  The north-facing beaches are steep and surely take a beating during winter storms.

The tide has exposed a large rocky area in the tidal zone.

Teams of folks were out on the rocks clamming, fishing and searching for mussels.  We completed our beach excursion and headed back to the motorway to head east.  Our objective was the cave art site at Altamira.

We passed this fellow on the motorway and by chance he ended up at our fuel stop so we went over to chat.  This rig is an ex-mil Bedford from the U.K. army.  It was in good shape and they were literally giving them away, so he used it as a basis for a build.  He found a "horse bed" that fit on the back and did a conversion on the equine transport portion to create a camper.  The fellow's name is Arthur and he lives in the Cornwall area.  He stated that it had rained every day for 13 months straight, so he packed and headed to Iberia for a break.

With Kathleen's good navigation, we ended up at Altamira a few hours later.  The Altamira cave site was discovered (by modern man) in 1879.  Since then, its popularity had grown to the point that the visitors were damaging the art, so the original cave was closed and a replica was created about 100 meters away.  The interior is a faithful reproduction complete with each of the artworks in their respective positions.  The majority of the big works were done on the ceiling making direct viewing a pain in the neck (literally), but taking photos overhead, particularly with an iPhone is not so bad.  These works were done in the paleolithic period using ochre, charcoal, and other pigments as well as simple scratching.  Current estimates suggest that these works were done about 20,000 years ago and are some of the earliest known works by man.

A variety of animals were depicted including goats, sheep, deer and buffalo.

The art was somewhere between abstract and representational and the story being told is open to interpretation.

Some of the works were in ochre, others in charcoal.

This panel appears to be a red deer painted in ochre.  The museum associated with the cave was very informative and had a number of good displays of implements and artifacts unearthed at the site.

We finished at Altamira and headed to our hotel in Santillana del Mar which was only a few miles away.  But, as has been our luck, our arrival corresponded with both a local festival and a high school soccer game resulting in huge pedestrian crowds.  Santillana del Mar is also a walled village, so no parking is allowed in the center of the historical area.  We had to walk about 500m from the public parking back to the hotel, but since we had already disgorged our luggage at the hotel, it was OK.

There were some nice homes in Santillana; every street was cobblestone which looked great but was hard to walk on.

The streets were very narrow and were choked with people in some areas.

Santillana was a tourist destination, as it turns out, and the proximity to Altamira provided reasons to travel to the area.

This "art" gallery spanned 3 floors.

In the main plaza a band was playing some kind of local music.  There was a Parador hotel on this square but due to the festival it was sold-out so Kathleen found a place that was nearby (albeit with logistical challenges for parking).

We found a Michelin rated restaurant and got an excellent dinner.  I ordered "blind" off the menu and was very pleased with both the presentation and the flavor.  We also had leek iberico rellenos, calamari and caldo del mar - all super-tasty.

After dinner, the festival crowds had cleared-out and we walked back to our hotel.  Next to our hotel was this old cathedral, still in use.

Another view of the tower of the cathedral.  These folks did not get the no-parking memo, so there will likely be citations in their future.

Our hotel was very similar to this building across the square from our front door.

Photos and Text Copyright Bill Caid 2024, all rights reserved.
For your enjoyment only, not for commercial use.