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.

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:-