Hello Piers Nicholson and all, Thanks for posting the sundials along the "Camino de Santiago" on your website "sundials on the Internet" http://www.sundials.co.uk/~camino.htm and the camino website http://www.santiago-compostela.net/sundials.html . I found this information quite useful when planning for our trip.
You reported no sundials in the major section of the camino from Leon to Santiago. There are not many; in my experience the sun rarely shine in this area, but there are a few worth noting. I have put my pictures on snapfish for anyone interested to view as a individual pictures or a slide show. Click on this link: http://www2.snapfish.com/share/p=100761212766835951/l=393780106/g=56484356/cobrandOid=1000131/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB . Make sure you get the whole url ending with =slab My pictures start with the two dials on the cathedral at Leon. There is a similar dial on the cathedral at Astorga, a stone block in the corner with dials on three faces. The east and west facing dials have hour lines across a circle. The south facing dial is conventional. All the gnomons have disappeared and stone surface is eroding effacing the carved lines. There is a new analemmatic sundial at the pass of Fonecebadon, the highest point on the camino at 1504 meters. Near the Cruz de Fierro, the Iron Cross, is a new classic analemmatic dial built in 2007. The hour points are appropriately stars as Compostela is the field of stars. The weather we experienced was poor, clouds, fog, wind and rain so the pictures are poor and show no shadows. At Villafranca del Bierzo, the town before the climb to the O Cebreiro summit, there are a couple of historical dials. One, a 1822 vertical declining dial, is on the Caixa Galicia across from the Hospital of San Nicolas. There is also a nice south facing slate dial high on the tower of San Nicolas church. At the church in Boente de Santiago there is a small stone south facing dial engraved in stone. As usual the gnomon has disappeared but the engraved hour lines and numbers are visible. In Santiago the three dials in the cloister of the cathedral remain in good condition. The dials on the stone block at the Hostal de los Reyes Catholica are being ignored. A structure for a cafe/bar now blocks the view of the dials. The highly eroded east face is still accessible but the south and west faces are now inaccessible. This is a shame as the lines are still quite clear on the west facing dial. All the gnomons have disappeared from this sundial which is so accessible to vandals at grade level. People do this trip for many different reasons. Searching for sundials was a minor but interesting part of our pilgrimage. This search focused our attention so we looked at details and gained much more of a prospective on the culture of this historical pilgrimage route. You are welcome to use these pictures with attribution to update your websites. I can provide full quality pictures on request or they can be downloaded from Snapfish for a minor cost. Regards, Roger Bailey
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