We merely touched at Vigo,
which looked fruitful, rolled up in a hot mist.
— Alfred Lord Tennyson (1859)

By Ron Fritze
July 3, 2008

For us it was a partly cloudy day with pleasant temperatures, so we were luckier than Tennyson. Vigo Bay was the last stop on our cruise itinerary. I was interested in visiting the port of Vigo since it would provide an opportunity to tour Santiago de Compostella, the great pilgrimage destination. The Independence of the Seas entered Vigo Bay, which is sheltered from the rough waters of the Atlantic Ocean by three islands strung across its opening. It is a sight to behold. One wonders what it is like to navigate Vigo Bay in a sailing ship.

Vigo Bay is famous in its own right because of the Battle of Vigo Bay, the first naval action of the War of the Spanish Succession, which was furiously waged on 12 October 1702.

The Raging Engagement
Sank the Treasure and Stunned an Empire.

To set the stage: Admiral George Rooke commanded a combined Anglo-Dutch fleet on an expedition that failed in its first objective, the capture of Cadiz. On the way back to England, Rooke learned that a Spanish treasure fleet from the Americas had taken shelter in Vigo Bay. Eager to capture the vast fortune being transported by the treasure fleet, the Anglo-Dutch squadron pushed into the Bay with cannons blazing.

In a raging engagement executed with extreme prejudice by the attackers, every French and Spanish ship was sunk that day. Many of the Spanish treasure ships were sent to the briny bottom by their own commanders to prevent the enemy from capturing the silver and gold from the Spanish Empire in the Americas. Still, Rooke and his fleet managed to capture some of the treasure and prevented the Spanish government from getting any of it. It was a great victory for the English and the Dutch and a stunning defeat for Spain and France. Two years later Rooke would lead the expedition that captured Gibraltar after another failed attempt on Cadiz.

From Vigo to Santiago de Compostella by tour bus is a ninety minute ride through the mountainous and green terrain of well-watered Galicia. Entering Santiago, one can see pilgrims trudging along the road. And for those who desire a different sort of religious experience, there is a McDonald's along the pilgrims' road. Not what I came to Santiago for.

Lascivious Esther Gives Way
to Sacrilegious Cheeses.

Our guide Maria told us a humorous story about the local cheese called Tetilla. The portico of the cathedral of Santiago includes a carving of the prophet Daniel. It is supposed to be the first medieval religious statue with a smiling face. The smiling Daniel stands opposite the biblical figure of Esther. According the legend, the original statue of Esther depicted her as a very voluptuous woman, and that was why Daniel was smiling. The bishop of Compostella found this local story to be lascivious and sacrilegious, so he had a breast reduction performed on Esther's statue.

The people of Santiago de Compostella and its surrounding agricultural region fought back. They began to make a cheese in the form of a woman's breasts to replace those that the bishop had taken from poor Esther's statue. The cheese is known as Tetilla, and you can still buy it in shops around Santiago de Compostella. Like Herodotus, I am simply repeating what a local source told me. Maybe my friend Chris Bridges-Esser, an expert on the lore of Santiago and its pilgrim road, knows if it is really true or simply apocryphal.

The Cathedral of Santiago is beautiful building. We were able to visit the crypt which holds the ashes of St. James in a silver box. Anyway, that is their story and they are sticking to it — a story that involves a lot of miracles. Whether the story is true or not, and whether St. James's ashes are really in that silver box or not, the story of St. James and his shrine at Compostella has inspired millions of pilgrims over the centuries. It is true that St. James became a great inspiration to the Spanish people and their rulers.

After so much reverence, we found a nice little cantina, where I got to enjoy some warmed chorizo and bread along with a large mug of Estrella Galicia, the local beer. It was all good.

At Sea, a Last Meal and a Game of Trivia.

Our bus returned to Vigo. Back on the ship, I found a nice place on the stern to watch the vanishing city as we sailed out of the Bay. The next day was a sea day and our last full day on the ship. I gave my last lecture to a good crowd of the hard core lecture-goers. We shared our last meal at sea and gave our tips to waiters Roderick and Valentin, then trooped down to play the last round of progressive trivia with our teammates, Bill and Mary. In a large field of teams, we managed to win fourth place. The scores were tight with the winners scoring 195 while our total was 189. We could not have done it without Bill and Mary's help. I thought we did pretty good since the trivia questions had a heavily British emphasis. Returning to the room, we got packed up and went to bed.

The next day we were in no hurry as we were only traveling a mere twenty miles by train to Winchester. Gathering up our luggage, we hailed a cab at the dock for the short ride to the train station. At Winchester we caught another cab to our bed and breakfast, the historical Wykeham Arms, which has been in continuous operation since 1756.

History Looms 'round Every Corner.

The Wykeham Arms is around the corner and about fifty yards from the house where Jane Austen died. A little further down that same street is Winchester College, England's oldest continuously operating school. From the entry of the Wykeham Arms you can see the entrance to Winchester Cathedral.

We got a tip from a man in the Winchester tourism office about a pub called The Bishop on the Bridge. It is located next to a bridge across the Itchen River, which runs through Winchester. Yes, the Itchen River — more on that later. The Bishop is a fine older pub with a lovely beer garden overlooking a walking path along the Itchen.

Beer, Bangers, Mash.

We sat down for a drink on a lovely day, sunny and mild. Several people struck up a conversation with us. Very pleasant — and I was pleased to discover that the pub served Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse on draft. Perfect for a warm day. We returned to the Wykeham Arms as Twylia was feeling a bit tired from seasickness. I got a classic meal of bangers and mash (aka sausages and mashed potatoes served with a brown onion gravy). Very nice.

The next day my dear friends from Cambridge days, Peter and Lorna Minshall, came to visit with Victoria, their daughter and my god-daughter. They also brought a colleague of Lorna's named Petro, who is a teacher on Gran Canaria. Petro is staying with them as part of a teacher and student exchange program. It was quite interesting to meet someone from the Canary Islands, a remote place whose history I have studied at a distance for a number of years. Petro was also familar with Royal Caribbean as they have an itinerary that stops in the Canary Islands, a cruise I hope to make someday.

Victoria has grown up to be a lovely young woman. She will be getting married in "the wilds of Wales," they told us. I am planning on attending the wedding, but think I will have to prepare a card with the unpronounceable names of the Welsh places I'll be trying to reach.

We had a wonderful day touring Winchester, where we saw the supposed Roundtable of King Arthur, the ruins of Wolvesey Palace, and Winchester Cathedral. We had lunch at The Bishop on the Bridge. All too soon, my friends had to get back to their car and head for home near Bristol. It was a good day.

I topped it off that evening by sitting in the pub at the Wykeham Arms, catching up the entries in my journal of the trip, reading the writings of Captain John Smith, drinking a Stella Artois, and eating the very tasty pork and leek bangers they were selling at the pub. I will remember that savory taste. If you are over in England anytime soon, I recommend the Wykeham Arms for a place to stay and Winchester for a place to visit.

Off to the Charity Hospital.

The next morning we had breakfast at the Wykeham Arms, and then packed up and checked out. They graciously allowed us to store our luggage so that we could walk the path along the Itchen to see St. Cross Hospital, which is the oldest continuously operating charitable institution in England. It houses some poor, elderly men. It also possesses a lovely Transitional Norman Perpendicular church, which is sort of a miniature Winchester Cathedral.

The Itchen River passes through Winchester in two streams. Isaac Walton of Compleat Angler fame did his fishing there. Being an incorrigible swine, I had been trying to convince Twylia that the one river was the Itchen while the other was the Scratchen, and that they came together at St. Cross Hospital to form the Crusten River — if you know what mean, and I think you do. (I want to take this opportunity to apologize to The Simpsons for plagiarizing. For any students who are reading this, this advisory: Don't try this at home, kids.)

In case you are wondering, Twylia did not buy that story. She learned a long time ago that I am full of it. (For any students reading this, the "full of it" comment is solely limited to my attempts to pull my wife's leg. My lectures are pure gold, ahem.)

A Walk among the River Swallows.

The walk was lovely. It is the same walk that inspired John Keats to write To Autumn, although we were doing it in late June. Keats put it this way:

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river swallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
 

Lots of people were using the path, and I don't blame them. If I lived there, I would be on that path every time that I could find even the slightest reason to venture out. The grounds of St. Cross were lovely, and we explored them thoroughly. I had been there before, but it was a first for Twylia. We also got to meet the St. Cross cows.

We walked back to Winchester and went to The Bishop on the Bridge for lunch. Then it was on the road again by train and bus to an airport hotel next to Heathrow. We got up at 4:30 a.m. and endured a long, long day flying home. Everything went smoothly, but as I write this on the evening of my second full day at home, I can still feel the fuzz of jetlag.

No Place like Home,
No Privilege like Travel.

We returned to a loving pack of dogs, a parrot who loves me and hates Twylia, and thoughts of going back to work. As Dorothy chanted to help her get back to Kansas, "There is no place like home," and that's true here in northern Alabama — but love of home doesn't diminish the adventures we shared and the wonders we experienced. Way back in 1776, Samuel Johnson wrote that "the grand objective of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean." We've been privileged to be able to do that twice. It's a blessing.

PS:  For those of you wondering about the ongoing beer chronicles in these narratives, please understand that some of my readers are deeply interested in the subject. At sea my internet connection was not sufficiently fast to e-mail everyone I wanted to e-mail, given the limited amount of time I had purchased, so I sought to share the brew as best I could. It was a tough job sampling all those beers. Somebody had to do it.

Click on the black panther to read Ron Fritze's fourth report from his sea cruise, "The Wandering Bones of Columbus: An Age of Discovery Pilgrimage."