Welsh Journals

Gower in Spain ON THE northern coast of Spain, in the Principality of Asturias, there lies a tract of country remarkably similar to peninsular Gower. Anyone knowing Gower and visiting coastal Asturias is sure to notice this likeness, which extends to the form and aspect of the whole landscape rather than to its details. For instance, walk through the old harbour at Gijon (which stands in relation to this tract much as Swansea does to Gower) and you reach the sandy bay so popular with Spanish holiday-makers in front of you the view could easily be that of Langland from the cliff walk. The general appearance of sea, rocks, cliff, trees and houses is the same, but a closer look shows that the buildings, in style and construction, are different from those at home. The basis of similarity between Gower and this corner of Spain is the level coastal plateau, a strikingly flat, even skyline running like a shelf at the foot of the Cantabrian Mountains. This surface, or rasa, generally maintains the Gower height of 2)Oft. above the sea, but close to Gijon there is a lower level corresponding to the raised beach found beyond Oxwich Point. The rock here is limestone, too, but lighter in colour than the Gower limestone, and it lies horizontally, so that the cliffs tend to be vertical. On the foreshore there are the familiar rock-fingers, seaweed-covered, running out to the waves, while the dusty narrow cliff-paths divide and merge just as they do in Gower, but with a richer variety of wild flowers among the bracken and grasses. The grey dry-stone walls enclosing fields just above the sea are lower than the Gower walls, built of fewer, larger blocks. Some of the best soils in Spain are developed on the plateau surface, humid calcareous soils, rich buff-coloured loams which are easy to work. For this Ribamontana al mar (the regional name for the locality) belongs to the coastal zone of humid Spain, and for this reason seems to be in a different world from the arid, treeless plains of Castile. So the soil can provide good foundations for a pleasant vista of farms and orchards, fields and trees. After the bare corn- lands of Castile, hedged fields make it seem like somewhere in Britain, though the low hedges are mostly of privet, with some gorse and bramble. Hedges usually mean pastoral farming, and this part of Asturias does have a great number of dairy cattle. The fields are small, about two or three acres, and each small farm seems to have just two or three cows, often tethered for grazing the cliff-edge. But in July it was more usual to see pairs of cows drawing large cart-loads of hay, and wearing very daintily fringed head-yokes to do so. It was a good thick hay-harvest, taken to the very cliff-top, with whole families in the fields scything, raking the hay into a few enormous cocks of almost cartload size, or loading. With the men in their customary blue working clothes (with black berets) and the women in pink and white, it was a colourful scene.