I hope you are having a happy Wednesday. Today and the rest of the week I will be giving a training in the city of A Coruña. This city is one of the cities that I like to visit the most, being a city of barely 250,000 inhabitants, located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula and bathed by the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, I think that my favorite Spanish cities are always cities with sea and mainly those that are bathed by the Atlantic Ocean or the Cantabrian Sea, being cities where you can admire a fiercer ocean than on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Here I share with you, for those who know this city, its approximate location in a Google Maps capture.
As I said, today is my first day in A Coruña and after leaving work at 18:30 I moved to the Hotel Eurostars Ciudad de A Coruña, arriving at the hotel at 19:00 hours. Last week, I decided to book this hotel because it would allow me to take a nice walk through one of the green areas of the city to one of the landmarks of the city, which is the Tower of Hercules, which is a lighthouse that has the privilege of being the only Roman lighthouse and the oldest working lighthouse in the world. In turn, as you can read in this post, on the way from the hotel to the Tower of Hercules I found charming places that I will explain below.
Last week, once I had confirmed my reservation at the hotel and seeing that the first day I would be in the city of A Coruña was Wednesday, I organized a nice #wednesdaywalk starting from the hotel to the tower of Hercules passing by the menhirs walk, the statue of the boat of Hercules and some other surprises that I found. In the following Google maps screenshot I show you the path I had planned last week for today's walk.
The starting point of my walk has been the hotel where I am staying. It is a hotel for those who want to visit the city that is a little far from the city center, but has the privilege of having a lot of green areas, close to the ocean and its price is relatively inexpensive compared to other hotels in the city. Normally, when I come to this city for work reasons, I usually stay at the hotel if there is availability.
Just at the exit of the hotel parking, on the left hand side, begins the walk of the menhirs, which is the origin of a walk that takes us directly to a green area on the banks of the cliffs where twelve menhirs arranged in a circular shape in two concentric circles were located. According to the information gathered in the web page that I leave you for your consultation, each menhir represents a member of each family, being the menhirs of greater size the parents and the smallest the children. A peculiarity of these menhirs is that the sculptor Manolo Paz, left an opening in each of the menhirs, so that through each opening one can focus on different points of interest. As an example, you can see that through one of the menhirs is framed the Tower of Hercules, which was the final point of my walk before returning to the hotel.
A few meters from the menhirs, there is another monument that is a unique "Stonehenge" of the sculptor Diaz Pardo, where tribute is paid to those shot during the Spanish Civil War of the last century. According to the records in this same place, during the Spanish Civil War, politicians, artists and intellectuals opposed to the Franco regime were shot.
Source: Monument to the executed
The next point to which I moved after being a few minutes at the monument to the executed and the menhirs for peace was a sculpture that was seen in the distance and that I had noted in my stops within the walk.
However, before reaching the sculpture of the ship of the Argonauts with Hercules on board, I called my attention to an area where there are some benches a few meters from the cliff, where my mind travelled to the summer months, where you do not know how comfortable it is contemplating the ocean while the sea breeze relieves the heat of the sun. An experience that I highly recommend.
After sitting on one of these benches for a while, I decided to continue along the path and finally reached the sculpture of the ship of the Argonauts (heroes of Greek mythology) with Hercules on it by the artist Gonzalo Viana.
The next sculpture that I found on my way and that I had not contemplated in my original route was the monument called the Cup of the Sun. According to Greek mythology, Hercules in one of his works requested the so-called Cup of the Sun to be able to travel to the westernmost part of the known world, which was the place where the Pillars of Hercules were located, which is what today is A Coruña.
Because in the distance in the ocean, I began to see lightning and thunder could be heard within seconds, I decided to rush directly to the vicinity of the Tower of Hercules, but I could not resist photographing the cliffs and a fishing boat that was fishing at that time.
Right next to the ramp that gives access to the promenade that goes to the lighthouse of the Tower of Hercules, there is another of the many sculptures in this free outdoor sculpture museum. The sculpture in question is the Breogan. You may wonder what the Breogan apart from a basketball club in Galicia. Well, Breogan is the name of a mythical Galician king in the territory of present-day Galicia who, according to Irish legendary traditions, made several raids along with his descendants with the aim of conquering present-day Ireland.
When I was about to climb the ramp of about 400 meters from the statue of Bregan to the Tower of Hercules, I began to notice that it started to rain a few drops quite thick, so I decided to take the best possible instan tena to share it with all of you and run back to the hotel. This Tower, as I have mentioned before, is an ancient Roman lighthouse of the first century that has been renovated over the century and has the honor of being the oldest Roman lighthouse still in operation.
After aborting my ascent to the Tower of Hercules because of the rain, I walked and ran back to the hotel due to the storm. First it started with a few drops, then it stopped raining, but when I was 200 meters away from the hotel a waterspout began to fall on me. The result you can see my face when I arrived at the hotel. Even so, it was worth the effort to show you this outdoor sculptural museum.
I hope you like this walk that I made to introduce you to the sculptural museum around the Tower of Hercules.
Best regards.
Own photograph taken with my Iphone SE.
Cover, separators and banner created with www.canva.com (free version).
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).
