The Ham Nomads

16 Jan 2015. <ES> León, & Astorga, Castile y León —

We bade goodbye to our front-end loader at Orsino la Mayor and continued westwards, towards León. We went through some more picturesque villages, crossed some spectacular bridges. The countryside was flat, and there were intermittent plantations of trees, all displaying their winter bareness!

We got to León and parked near the river on Paseo de Papalaguinda, just below a white-painted church. It was only about a kilometre walk to the Cathedral. On the way, we passed a building that looked a little familiar — the Casa Botines — it was designed by Antonio Gaudí, our friend from our last trip to Barcelona, and built in 1892-3!

We had heard that the Cathedral was rather spectacular, being built with the minimum of stone structure. Its walls are a kaleidoscope of stained glass dating back to the 13th century. It has been likened to the 20th century style of skyscraper building, with a frame of steel and a curtain of glass hung from it. Well, it's as close to that aim as a 13th century architect could achieve.

From the guidebook: 'The poor quality of the stone and the faults in the foundations, which are riddled with hypocausts, together with the fragility of its architecture, have made this building one of the most accident-prone constructions in Spain, from its origin to the present.' Apparently, in the 19th century, they put a baroque dome over the intersection of the nave and the transepts, and it overstressed the structure so much that they virtually had to rebuild the place, sans dome! All the windows were removed while the stonework was strengthened, and then every piece of glass was replaced into its rightful position! As a sign of the extent of the repairs, the original construction took only 50 years, when León had a population of only 5,000 and construction techniques were far more primitive — and in the late 19th century, the repairs took the same amount of time. When they finally removed the scaffolding in 1901, everyone held their breath as the building groaned ominously, and then settled into its new equilibrium. The pillars of the walls don't actually support the structure — that's left to flying buttresses outside — so the whole building looks (and is) fragile by 13th (and 20th) century standards! But the place is a gem!

We got up to the cathedral at about 3pm, only to find that León runs on a 1:30pm to 4pm lunch break. But León is towards the west of Spain, and Spain runs on the European time zone, so 4pm in León happens when it is 3pm in London, and at about the same longitude. Confusing, eh!?

We wandered the cathedral. The stained glass windows soar 37 metres above you, higher than the ceilings of many cathedrals! The windows themselves are in magnificent condition — probably due to them being totally renovated about a hundred years ago. Out in the cloister, there are wall paintings that have been rediscovered fairly recently and conserved using modern conservation philosophy — in other words, the missing parts are not reconstructed, but filled with a matching plaster — a good thing, as it doesn't introduce errors of interpretation.

After we explored the cathedral, and its associated museum of ecclesiastical art and artifacts — sorry, no photos there — we went back to the van.

The trip back to the van was fascinating — it was snowing! Our first real snowfall of the trip! We drove on to Astorga, where there is a rather nice aire in the carpark for the bullring! Interesting!

Distance driven — today, 110 miles ( 177 km ); to date, 11,185 miles ( 18,001 km )