First Port of Call

“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note
As his corse to the rampart we hurried.
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.”

Our first port of call on the cruise will be Ferrol in the Spanish region of Galicia. Ferrol is close to Corunna, where General Sir John Moore won the Battle of Corunna against the French Marshal Soult in January 1809, covering the extraction of the British Army from Spain in the face of Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. Moore was fatally wounded in the battle, and is buried in the San Carlos Garden in Corunna, for any who may care to visit his grave. Many of us will have learnt the poem at school, but forgotten the circumstances.

Also in Galicia is the World Heritage listed city of Santiago da Compostela. The cathedral contains the shrine of St James the Great, and has been a place of pilgrimage since the 10th century AD. 'Santiago' is a derivation from the mediaeval Latin Sanctu Jacobu,  or St James.