See this little window? It’s not very spectacular, being at one side of the old cottage shown in the featured photo, in the nearby village of Studley Roger. But I think it’s quite privileged. It’s just above one of the oldest post boxes in the area, one of the diminishing number of post boxes still to exist from the reign of Queen Victoria. Its design means it can’t have existed before 1857, and it’s certainly 19th century in origin. So the window earns its fifteen minutes of fame as a Monday Window, and the box itself as a bonus for Jude’s Life in Colour, which this month celebrates the colour red.
Was it a month ago that we left Spain? Apparently so. Let’s relive our last day, mooching round Santander before catching the ferry for the long journey home. We could catch lots of images of the city in a single photo, in this building just alongside La Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción.
But nearby, there’s window-shopping …
…and then a picture postcard view of the multi-windowed Plaza Porticada.
Later, on board ship, there were windows on deck, designed to shelter us from the buffeting breezes. But something had gone wrong with one, and early in the voyage, it was being repaired.
But whether on land or at sea, we could spot the coastline near Santander, as shown in the featured photo.
We travelled to and from Spain on the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander. Two days and a night of the English Channel, and the boundless ocean in the form of the Bay of Biscay. I spent a lot of time on deck. but inside the Galicia, there were portholes a-plenty through which to see the sea. As my fellow-passengers also knew.
Zigzagging my way into Zaragoza’s old city centre, I came across, ahead of me, a glass canopy. A market perhaps? But no. It covered Caesar Augustus’ Roman Amphitheatre. I could inspect it quite well from the street, but on a whim, decided to pay the entrance fee and go in. ‘I’ve decided to take your word for it that you’re over 65’, the chivalrous man at the desk said. ‘It’s free for you’.
I was so glad I went. I discovered that this theatre was only relatively recently excavated. It was designed during the 1st century CE for an audience of 6,000 people (in a city of 18,000) and remained in use for some 200 years. When the Romans left, firstly the Moors covered over the site to provide extra housing space in the crowded city centre. Later, it became a Jewish quarter, and when the Jews were expelled in the 14th century, Christians moved in. And so it was until the late twentieth century. I didn’t quite understand why it had become possible to uncover and excavate this site in the 1970s. But I enjoyed exploring, and took pleasure in the unusual distorted views of it provided by the glass windows of the museum which explained the amphitheatre’s history.
Trees and the amphitheatredistorted in the museum windows.
The barri antic – old town centre – of Premià de Mar is terraced by rows of what were once fishermen’s cottages, mainly dating from the 18th century, and known as lescases decós. Their inhabitants divided their time between two occupations – fishing – and market gardening in their long narrow back gardens. The featured image shows a typical street, with awnings stretched across to shelter passers-by from the summer heat.
There aren’t many trees, so these days the town council has placed some in tubs along the pedestrianised streets.
With not many trees about, some residents cram their windows with cooling plants:
Although one careful resident has thoughtfully left a cat-sized gap at the bottom of his plant-friendly window.
Poor old window. Poor old washing line. They each wanted their five minutes of fame as a Monday Window, and as a Monday Washing Line. And instead their shadows grab the limelight.
If you want to know why the window seems a bit curvy, that’s because the wall it’s projected on is pretty old. Vestiges remain from the days when it was first built, in the 15th century, for lay brothers from Fountains Abbey who lived and farmed here.
Last week meant a visit to London, to see the family we haven’t had sight of since last August. This was no tourist trip, but on our last day, the children securely occupied at school or nursery, we did venture forth – more of that another day. Today, I’ll simply share views from the escalator at Canary Wharf Station, because I always find this sight optimistic and full of light.
Everyone knows that when a castle or a church tumbles into ruin, it’s an opportunity for the locals. All over Europe and beyond, once majestic buildings have found new uses as humble farm labourers’ cottages, or a house for the local blacksmith, or … whatever’s needed really. Round here there are at least two houses whose builders hadn’t merely appropriated the stone, but also reinstated the windows found in a tumbledown place of worship.
This house is two farm-workers’ cottages knocked into one. The original tiny dwellings have been here for centuries: but being humble didn’t stop them from having fine windows once part of a church that no longer exists.
Not far away is a handsome farm house. That too benefits from a spot of recycling.
Last week, I showed you wisteria on the front of the house. Today, we’ll sneak into the walled garden and look at the clematis framing one of the windows in our neighbour’s house – there it is in the featured photo. And here’s the lilac, just coming out:
And here’s the view from the kitchen window – the lilac’s still budded, but soon it will be fully out – for one week only – before becoming once more a rather unremarkable shrub.
I may produce more lilac for Jude’s Life in Colour: two shades of purple to go at in just a few days. But I promised another window view for Ludwig’s Monday Window. So here we are.
This is the time of year when the outside of our house, and the one to which we’re attached deck themselves in scented clouds of wisteria.
There’s lilac below the kitchen window: that’ll bloom very soon: already the tightly furled buds are loosening and hinting at the soft mauves and purples that will emerge. That’ll be for next week then.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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