Day 45 – 23 August 2023 – Oviedo, Spain

After another good breakfast in Santiago de Compostela it was in the bus & off again towards Oviedo, another city on the northern Atlantic Ocean coastline of Spain. The scenery changes as we drive along, now there are more mountains & forests of plantations of eucalyptus trees. Later the scenery changes to cleared farming land, then fruit orchards.

Our first stop today is at Casa Trabanco, a cider producer established in 1925 and is up in the hills south of a city called Gijon. Our bus driver is very skilful threading his way along the narrow lanes & finding a parking spot outside the factory/cider house/restaurant. We are taken downstairs into a very large reception room with tables set up & very large chestnut wood barrels lining the walls.

One of the staff is tapping apple cider from the barrels & demonstrating how she pours cider into a glass with a drop of over a metre to get bubbles into the cider. We are each given a taste & then the tapas style food comes out. My goodness, is this ever a delicious feast, we think we are close to finished & then more platters of delicious food comes out. Followed by dessert, we are that full we can hardly walk. We are then asked to come & try our hand using water from a bottle to pour from a height, most people are not very good & there are lots of laughs. The young lady said that Ron was good, having long monkey arms helped to get the praise.

We are guided outside & shown where the apples come in by truck & are weighed before being dumped down large chutes for processing, then by being washed, sorted, then crushed. There are huge mechanical presses that crush the apples & the juice is stored temporarily in very large vats before being pumped into other vats for fermentation. The underground shed next door is full of very large chestnut wood barrels used for storing the cider until being bottled. This cider factory is a large operation & they source apples not only from the local area & the broader Spain, but also they truck in apples from countries such as Czechoslovakia.

It is only a short drive now to Oviedo & we stop near the main square & meet our local guide Renee. We walk a little around the old town, there is hardly anyone on the streets as it is now afternoon & siesta time in Spain & nearly all the shops are closed. The shops open about 3 pm & close at 9 pm. We can understand why as it is very hot. There are lots of beautiful old buildings in town, as well as a striking new architectural masterpiece, the Cultural Centre. This is a very modern & striking looking large building, made from steel & glass.

There are brass scallop shell symbols here & there on the footpath, these are to show the pilgrims the direction of Santiago de Compostela after they leave the Cathedral in Oviedo. Renee then takes us in to the Cathedral de San Salvador & shows us the huge gold storyboard behind the altar. It isn’t a design I have seen before in a Catholic church & Renee explains what the story is all about & how to read the story. He tells the story in a really interesting way. He tells us a little bit more about the history of the church, more than 1,000 years old & then takes us into the church museum.

The church museum is off to the side & has some extremely important relics. Number one is the shroud that covered the face of Jesus & Renee explained the results of the scientific tests, very interesting, a small piece of cloth has been cut off for the scientists to verify that it is authentic.  The result – the cloth is about 2000 years old, a Jewish person, because the blood came from the head & the blood type was AB (most Jews had that blood type at that time) so the conclusion is that there is a strong possibility that it was Jesus’s shroud. There are some holy crosses there as well, the Cross of Saint James, the Cross of the Angels, donated to the church in the year 808 plus the cross of Christ of Nicodemus.

Afterwards we looked a little more at the old town & came across some of the small squares that used to be market places & were used to sell foods & goods. The fish seller square had a statue of a woman & man fish seller in brass. The milk seller square had a statue of a woman & donkey loaded up with milk & water.

More walking & more interesting streetscapes in the old town with hardly any locals around during siesta. There are lots of beautiful old buildings, most of them restored. An interesting thing about the squares is that most of them are laid with red Spanish marble, the same as we have in our bathroom at home.  Back to our hotel, check in & relax after a long day. The hotel is a beautiful old building, however, the bathroom looks good, but has a poor design. There are glass doors on both the shower & toilet that open inwards. First world problems. Another great day.