Gijon
The gritty port of Gijon sits just over halfway along Spain’s northern coastline, northwest of Oviedo. We knew nothing about it before we arrived, except that travel guides tended to use words like “unspoilt” (the Guardian) and “surprisingly engaging” (Lonely Planet) when describing it. I arrived with no expectations and few assumptions, which is just as well because the first impressions weren’t particularly good.
After stopping somewhere on the outskirts of Gijon for lunch, we drove up towards our campsite, located around 8 miles further down the coast. The drive out from Gijon to get there took us through a huge industrial heartland. Massive metalworks latticed the scrubland with towering pulleys, bulging furnaces, and hulking chimneys. It stretched for miles, lurking around every corner of the curving road and blocking out the sunlight. It was ugly and immense. As we drove on through the endless factories, I doubted very much whether any Lonely Planet travel writer had made it to this particular corner of the landscape.
Luckily, our campsite was lovely. We emerged out of the shadows into a pocket of sunshine at the very top of a hill, and found the entrance to the site tucked up at the end of a steep path. Our pitch was spacious and tidy, and near to the shower block. The view from our tent looked out across the sea and towards the smaller villages dotted along the coast. It was quiet and peaceful, and very pretty. There was a train station near to the campsite which would take us back into Gijon, and the walk there took us through a field.
Our walk through the field began unremarkably, but we soon found ourselves ambling past odd-looking bungalows. Paint peeling, windows boarded up, roofs damaged; it didn’t take us long to work out that the place had been abandoned. There was an overgrown crazy golf course, what looked like a closed-down shop, the remains of a barrier that no one needed to use. It was eerie and unsettling.
A little research told me that — as I had suspected — the empty houses and golf course had once been part of a holiday complex. Designed to provide workers with affordable holidays, the site was opened in the 19500. Though the site flourished in the 70s and 80s, by the 1990s it was no longer a vacation hotspot. The holiday village was closed and the site abandoned. I thought of children playing, of parents playing tennis, of families noisily cooking BBQs on the derelict and forgotten scrubland, and it felt like a dreamscape.
I didn’t feel reassured by the train station, either; just two concrete planks in a field, with a single track running between them. There was no ticket machine, or office. On one side, a dirt track provided ample space for two young motorbike riders to joyride down to the bottom and curve back to the top. On the other side, the empty bungalows stared impassively out across the field. The train was due 5 minutes after we arrived, but we were still waiting for it 20 minutes later.
The train did eventually arrive, and tugged us through the countryside to the centre of Gijon. We saw the metalworks again, and rattled through a series of twisting tunnels before emerging into a train station. This, I realised, was central Gijon. The station was large, but lacked the air of restless expectancy I’ve come to associate with transport hubs. There were very few people waiting for a train, and not many people milling around waiting to meet anyone. Walking through the station to the exit, we saw blocked-off platforms, train lines no longer in use. I wondered where they led, the kinds of people they might have carried, and thought again of the abandoned holiday village near the campsite.
The walk from the train station to the old city wasn’t long and led us to a working harbour, where tiny boats bobbed in the glistening water. We stumbled upon a bustling Portuguese food fair, where we tried red green wine — red wine made with green grapes — and some eggy pastries. We also explored the Roman Baths, which featured some beautifully restored murals. We enjoyed cocktail hour in an English-themed bar, where Liam had a drink containing sea urchin.
All things considered, the old centre of Gijon isn’t a bad place to spend a day or two. But something about the place nagged at the back of my mind — and still does. The large train station, the bustling harbour, the vast public squares; they all suggest a city of a much grander scale than Gijon. Of all the places we’ve been so far, Gijon is the one I struggle the most to make sense of. It is, above all, an industrial, working city. Unless your lifelong passion is Roman baths, I wouldn’t be rushing here any time soon.
