Segovia in one day

Segovias impressive Gothic cathedral on Plaza Mayor in the Old City.

Segovia, capital of Segovia province is situated northeast of Madrid. It is about 1000m above sea level, which makes a noticeable difference to the climate. It is usually a lot cooler than in Madrid or Castilla-La-Mancha. Although on our visit in late October it was T-Shirt warm.

There are two main attractions you have to see in Segovia. One is the 29m high aqueduct that crosses Plaza del Azoguejo, the other one is the Alcázar, which is at the west end of Segovia where the rivers Río Clamores and Río Eresma meet.

The old part of the city is pleasant to walk through with its cafes and bars, churches and interesting old buildings with storks nesting on the top. And it would not be a true Spanish City if it didn't have a Plaza Mayor. On our visit the square was covered with colourful market stalls and yelling vendors. In the background we could see the impressive cathedral, that usually dominates the square.

The Roman aqueduct with 118 arches goes across Plaza del Azoguejo.

The Alcázar and its numerous towers seems like a fantasy palace.

The palace is built on top of a hill, so you don't have to go up the towers to get a spectacular view.

The markets on Plaza Mayor with the cathedral in the background.

Like most cities in Spain, Segovia has its own style of facades. Here are two of the patterns you find all over the city.

Pool story

Here's a story about how two people (and the occasional days brick laying help from friends), built their own swimming pool.

My wife and I built this pool directly next to the house (which we also built, but isn't finished yet) on our property in rural Toledo (Spain).

I'll start at the beginning, those of you who cant wait to see the final result just scroll down.....

Our house is situated on the top part of a sloping section. There is room to put a swimming pool in front of the house but as we have a horse who lives on our land (its only 500m2) we needed to leave room for him. We also want to fit the horses house and a double garage on the section, so decide to build our pool directly adjacent to the house.

This also meant minimal digging because the section was already sloped. Because of the location of the proposed pool, we couldn't get a digger in, so dug out the hole needed by hand. We only needed to dig a small amount out at the shallow end (top part of our section), but make no mistake, it took months! You can see the hollow that we dug out on the right side of this photo:

(left: the view looking down the section, right: from the bottom of the pool looking back up)

After building a 20cm brick framework at the bottom, we filled the base with concrete. Lucky that Mike and Kim were there as I ordered too much concrete and we had to scree the pool plus move the extra concrete to a useful position before it all set (in Spanish weather concrete sets FAST!).

Luckily Jesus (one of our neighbours) helped so after a small miracle the pool base was finished.

Then we laid the bricks. All walls were made from rows of single bricks and a space in between where we later put steel re-enforced concrete. Here are some photos from that construction phase which lasted about 1 and a half years (because we had a baby in the middle of it).

My father in law (right) and I (left) hard at work bricking. He helped for a week and a half and managed 3 rows of bricks (which is actually alot).

Here you can see the side wall almost up to height. Note the space in the middle for the concrete. Our son looks on from his play-pen.


Here is the pool up to height. Note the black waterproofing done between the pool wall and the house. The concrete inside the brick walls also has a water proofing additive.


This was my first ever cement rendering job. The cement render also has waterproofing added (we weren't taking any chances). Smooth huh?


Here is the pool cement rendered. My wife Karin is standing in the deep end to give it some scale. Up the shallow end its just about a meter deep.

The last step was to put on the tiles and grouting, install the slabs on top of the sides and then fill the pool with water. We couldn't fill it all the way because there was no support in front of the deep end (which is completely out of the gound). Nevertheless after doing all that the pool was more or less finished.

We have no in-between shots after the pool was cement rendered, instead, hold your breath and scroll down to the finished pool.

---scroll down to the finished pool---

---scroll down to the finished pool---










Go here for more on how we built our Spanish swimming pool