Situation of Noya--Antiquity of the town--The coach drive from Santiago--Singing cartwheels--Where the golden torques were found--Copper and iron--Mountain valleys--Waterfalls--Paper mills--A ruined monastery--Nearing Noya--A peep at the sea--A village green--The oldest church--Noya merchants of the fourteenth century--The Sunday before Easter--My visit to a nun--The church of San Martin--The interior--The castellated apse--The rose window--Imitation of the _Pórtico de Gloria_--The wooden roof--Strange brackets or corbels--Lamperez--An alderman of Noya--An old house--The old wall--The Franciscan monastery--The Noya magistrate--An old family mansion--Drives in the neighbourhood--_Puente de Alonso III._--The Tambre--Fruit blossoms--Flowers--Examining the cartwheels--Inside a granite cottage--A cross by the roadside--The Ria--Greek colonies--Roman inscriptions--Our drive to Portosino--A famous _trovador_--English ships--Muros--A good port--Greek type of beauty preserved--A Greek costume--Visit to a dolmen--_Pena de Oro_--Gallegan peasants and the Moors--Another granite cottage--A Grenadier in the Engineers--A square apse--Noya pilgrims--A leper chapel--Scene from our balcony--Maunday Thursday--Good Friday--Fetching home the candlesticks--A Good Friday dinner--A lady resident--Market baskets in church--Thirteenth century houses--José Ferreiro--Galicia’s first vocabulary--Bull fights at Noya--Two kinds of homesickness--The music of the _gaita_ Noya is a town of nearly five thousand inhabitants, but the hills and valleys by which it is surrounded are so thickly dotted with villages that on market days and feast days, when the people flock in by every road, there is a great deal more life in it than the above statistics would lead a visitor to expect. Noya is almost a seaside town, for it lies on the banks of a magnificent ria, an inlet of the Atlantic, and so close to the ocean that the rocky coast can be distinguished by the naked eye. The river Tambre, which has its rise in the centre of Galicia, flows into the ria to the north of the town, and the river Trava on the west, so that Noya is bounded on three sides by water. High green hills slope away from the water and shelter the town from cold and wind. It is a lovely and romantic situation. “Noya,” writes Molina,[236] “is a pretty town, and one of the oldest in Galicia, and it has inhabitants of noble blood. Here they make many and good ships, both great and small, because the district abounds in timber. Noya has the best sardines in the realm, so that people wanting sardines ask especially for those of Noya.”