The bunkering finished and the Black Watch eventually set off some hours late.

Ferrol harbour outlet:-

On the starboard side was this collection of houses:-

This was a different (small) harbour on the port side as we sailed. Mugardos?:-

The estuary narrowed for a bit on the way out and there were old fortifications on each side of the estuary.

To port side:-

To starboard was the Castle San Felipe (Castelo San Felipe):-

Castle San Felipe slipway:-

If you look carefully at this photo you should see some gunsmoke coming from the castle. As a “greeting” to the ship there was a guy in mediaeval costume firing a blunderbuss or some such thing:-

Castle San Felipe:-

Looking back to port side fortification, pilot boat following the ship:-

There was a third fortification on the starboard side a bit further out from Ferrol. Pleasure boat in foreground:-

The pilot boat zoomed a little closer after we’d made it past the narrows:-

This quarry was the last sign of human activity before the ocean:-

The harbour side, Ferrol. Lovely paving and trees:-

You can see the SS Black Watch in the background here berthed at Ferrol. That beardy bloke got in the photo again:-

Getting up on deck some time after we got back I could hear the sound of pipers again, coming from the quayside. I assume these were the Galician variety:-

I took some video. Click on the picture to take you to it. Galician pipes have a less strident sound than the Scottish variety:-

There was a delay to our departure because of what at first I couldn’t make out from the ship’s PA. I eventually cottoned on they’d said they were “bunkering”. I was amused that the same word is still used even though the ship won’t have coal bunkers but oil tanks instead.

It was a beautiful warm day and the ship put on an impromptu deck party, complete with six piece band.

My cynical self had the thought that they did this to push sales of sangria to offset any excess berthing fees arising from the overstay.

There wasn’t much deco in Ferrol. We found two nice squares and this one, the Plaza de Espaňa, had a deco building on it:-

A Banca:-

Close-up showing deco detail on rounded corner:-

Balconied Deco:-

More Art Deco, Ferrol:-

On the way in to Ferrol from the ship we passed an area known as Arsenal Militar. A mannequin recalled Spain’s military past. Here’s a photo with some beardy bloke beside it:-

Ferrol seems to be laid out in a grid pattern though the streets are not wide. This was at siesta time when the streets emptied:-

A square in Ferrol:-

The building to the left of the square in the photo above has an odd mixture of architectural styles. See the glass gable-end:-

It was also hard by what may be a memorial to Spain’s colonial wars (if I can trust my reading of the Spanish inscription.) It was in the middle of a busy road so I didn’t linger long:-

You know you’re not in Calvinist Scotland any more when you come across a statue like this in an otherwise perfectly normal street. (Hooded penitents are apparently a big part of Holy Week celebrations in Ferrol.):-

Ferrol, or El Ferrol, in the province of A Coruña, Galicia, Spain, was known for forty-four years as El Ferrol del Caudillo as it was the birthplace, in 1892, of dictator Francisco Franco. Curiously, in some sort of political karmic equalistion it was also the birthplace of the founder of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), Pablo Iglesias, in 1850.

The town is a mixture of ancient and modern with the older parts near to the harbour.

This is a stitch of three photos taken from the ship at berth:-

Ferrrol has been a shipbuilding town since the time of the early Bourbon kings of Spain, capital of the Spanish Navy’s Maritime Department of the North. This looked like an aircraft carrier:-

Another naval ship:-

These buildings were hard by the harbour:-