Monastery Magenta

Monastery Magenta

We drive south from Santiago to stay in a Parador. Monastertio de Santo Estevo, in the hills above Ourense, is a medieval Monastery that later became a School of the Arts and is now a Parador, a state owned hotel. The contemporary architectural restoration has been beautifully realised, it saves the mood of the old building but adds the necessary glazing and comforts, including thick pile grey carpets in the corridors, to make it habitable today.

Monastery of Santo Estevo

Cloisters

One feature is a vast chimney room where the central chimney extends three floors high. The dining room is also on a monumental scale. It is all rather overbearing.

In the central courtyard the ancient grey stone is enlivened with a bright magenta rhododendron.This is the only spot of colour allowed apart from the plastic flowers in the grounds of the little cemetery.

The only natural colour around

Plastic flowers in the cemetery

 The Virgen del Carmen,
patron saint of seamen.  

St. James with his severed head

The chapel contains some contemporary additions to the baroque Sculptures; the Madonna presides over a plastic fishing boat and the Pilgrim is carrying a waxy, severed head.

Estevo the Alsatian, looking Gothic

Next day we meet Estevo, a very friendly Alsatian dog, in the chapel.

Colin and Estevo

Estevo accompanies us on our morning walk through wiggly paths strewn with fallen trees, and crossing over little rivulets. We pass many deserted houses awaiting discovery. 

On our journey to Salamanca the following thought occurs to me:-

There are three people in this marriage: Me, Colin and Gloria, our satnav.

Gloria is the cuckoo in our otherwise perfect automobile nest. She claims to come from an old family; Sextants on her father’s side and Astrolabes on her mother’s. She tolerates working in our car because it is a very old Mercedes (such a good spanish name), and so just posh enough to be worthy.

Gloria has a very bossy manner and she tells us where to go in the car. Her pronunciation of Spanish is even worse than mine. If we disobey orders, she claims to be “recalculating”. Most women know this sort of admission is to be avoided, but Gloria tells us what she’s thinking. Despite this obvious character flaw, sometimes we are tempted to believe her.

Today we took a new road from Puebla De Sanabria to Salamanca, and she got very cross and claimed we were driving through a field. She repeatedly asked us to “follow the highlighted route”, and refused to believe we were actually on a road. Later, in the old city when Gloria found our hotel, we made it up, and now all is amicable.