The day before I left for the Picos, the 28th September, was Jack's leaving "do". Amazingly, I drank too much and so woke early feeling like sh.., far from chipper. But I got the train, as we neared Baker Street the girl opposite asked if I knew where the EasyBus bus stop was? "Did I look like someone who knew where the EasyBus bus stop was?" the fact that I was travelling on it was immaterial. She was pretty, in a young and pretty kind of way so I relented. We chatted about university in Basel and how she was going to miss the bus. She did, she was on mine, she was in the queue next to me at the airport, I pointed out that fate kept throwing us together and that we should get married but she pretended to be deaf. Her bag was 5Kg overweight due to some serious shopping.
At the airport I dithered and ended up in Pret a Manger for a breakfast sandwich before dithering over two bottles of Campari which I didn't buy. I tasted some Baileys and then proceeded to the gate for non-boarding - in fact, non-plane. However it arrived eventually and I found a space next to a man with a Berghaus jacket and walking boots.
"Hmmm?" I thought, "Is this one of my fellow walkers, in fact might this be my bedroom buddy?"
He was nuts.
"Oh God!" actually being fervently evoked prior to take-off by said person. "Definitely".
There was a spare seat so I shifted into it and feigned unconsciousness for the next ninety minutes. Ok "Nuts" is perhaps a trifle unfair - aspergic.
We arrived and, on standing uselessly in a locked plane, discovered an older couple in front of me, the lady of whom sported a Pura Aventura label,
"Oh good!" I thought, "People potentially slower than me."
I followed them through immigration, watched my case exit the conveyor, and waited for it to come round again. On leaving, I failed to find the man with the notice, I did find the minibus but not the man. I had a plan, I would stand next to the "Older Couple" nope, they'd buggered off as well. Eventually I was accosted,
"Are you with Pura Aventura?" I was rescued, it was Diego, he introduced me to Lucy - hang on, me, Lucy, "Older Couple", that was four, Aspergic Man was off elsewhere.
No-one wanted the front seat in the bus so, with my natural air of superiority, I claimed it. So we set off and drove down one of the most under-used motorways in Europe built with my (and your -Dear Reader) taxes. The coastal scenery undulates, the motorway doesn't, it flies over concrete viaducts and piledrives through hills.
At the turn off for Hotel Arredondo the tax burden ceases, and we rattle over patchy concrete to the former stud farm. There Mariella is dragged from the kitchen to show us our rooms. Lucy and I are garretted in the roof, where the skylight window sometimes gives my worm's-eye-views of passing wagtails. My room is fairly large, Lucy is in the more traditional head-banging attic, the sort that is called "cosy" in the brochures.
Now all that remains is to occupy the several hours until dinner. I look at my book, it's already halfway through - it will have to be eked. I look at my journal and rue the lack of pen. Eventually I look at the ceiling - it is quite dull, so I decide to look at my book again via a beer. Tony ("OC"- Male) joins me and helps me look at the beer, comparing his with mine. Judy ("OC" - Female) arrives, looks at the beer for a bit and then takes Tony away for a walk. I return to my ceiling and Stargate, in Spanish (well it was either that or Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, and even if that had been in English...).
Finally it's nine o'clock - Dinner Time. My stomach impels me downstairs by the simple principle of placing a gaping void immediately in front of my centre of gravity. I find the others sitting around a table gently salivating. We move into dinner and order a bottle of Tinto - sadly, or not some might say, Lucy turns out to be a Blanco girl. We scan the variety of meat up for grabs and Lucy turns out to be a pescy vegetarian but at least they have fish. Somewhat guiltily I order the cold meat plate and a veal sirloin, The plate when it arrives covers half the table, I share - reluctantly. The sirloin is probably about the same volume as the cold meats but arranged in a vertical profile. the sweet is a sort of cheesecake, with a caramel sauce of exquisite propensities. The meal finished I go to bed and spend the next six hours awake, digesting. Occasionally a waft of cigarette smoke will drift mysteriously through the room like some sort of nicotine-fiend poltergeist. I doze and am awoken by rain battering the roof at 3.25 and then again by the 8.15 train practising blowing its horn.
Breakfast we have been warned is slight.
"Zumo naranja?"
"Si." (Good accent eh?)
"Cafe con leche?"
"Si."
"Tostados?"
"Si." (As you can tell I had got the hang of things now.)
"Huevos y bacon?"
"!"
"Huevos y bacon?"
"! Umm. Si."
Thus, slightly overfortified, I stagger back to my room to squeeze into my shorts and drape a shirt over my breakfast.
Diego arrives (our guide Alex has been given time out to run a horse in an endurance horse race), we say, "Picos!"
He shrugs and says "Cares Gorge"
We drive through the countryside of "Green Spain", which looks a lot like Wales, and end up in Arenas de Cabrales where Diego disappears to buy the picnic and we follow, ending up in a shop that sell the worst sort of tourist tat and chainsaws (electric or petrol) and chamber pots (china or enamel). From there we head up into the massif until the road runs out, and then start on the path, which goes first up, then down, then along. It reminds me of "Cheddar Gorge in Somerset", only bigger, with less parking. Oh, and it's surrounded by mountains. The lunch stop was exceptional, dry cured smoked beef - cor, ham - cor, cheese, cor, other stuff, cor plus free walnuts courtesy of a passing tree! After lunch the girls decided to wend their way back and Diego, Tony and I sashayed on to the first bridge, at this point Tony left us and Diego and I carried on to the dam, declared the gorge "done" and then legged it back, failing to catch the others. We found Tone sheltering from a shower in the road tunnel and so walked down to the cafe for a celebratory beer and the van keys.
So what did we see? several Vultures, some Redstarts, oh yes and a Wallcreeper, lots of vertiginous cliffs, an enormous spring where one of the three massifs empties into the river, some interesting geology, oh and did I say a Wallcreeper? The reason that Twitchers come to the Cares Gorge - the Wallcreeper - did I say we saw one? It did involve leaning backwards over a 100M cliff but hey - a Wallcreeper (Tichodroma muraria).
After a quick shower and a quick beer we hightailed it to a cider barn for an evening of more meat (plus cider). The popular myth is that the cider is undrinkable unless aerated by pouring it in a thin stream into the glass from about five feet up, the glass has to be held at the correct angle to avoid splashing. In order to achieve this one requires the ocular placement of the average prey animal without ruining your, and several other people's shoes. some of the locals can achieve this thin, slow, pour - a bar skill equivalent to "Ringing the Bull's Nose" or getting all nine down when playing "Devil amongst the Tailors" i.e. one learned by lots of practice but in the case of the latter two, less trouser washing.
The size of the cider press lends weight to the importance of cider in the area, the average saloon car would fit fairly comfortably inside it giving one the ability to satisfy two green urges at once. In this Sidreria, the cider is now poured via some strange battery-powered construction. I thought the cider was lovely, Tony found it "interesting" and then dived into a bottle of Rioja, the other two sipped. Diego looked on perhaps regretting the lack of people in the party, that might have turned this into a night of cider-fuelled riot and license. As it is we go home and go to bed.
Rain at 24.00, 01.30, 03.00, and 05.00, then train is five minutes late.
The next morning ( Si. Si. Si. Si.) Alex arrives, he is tanned (I originally misread this as torrid, either will probably do), slim and pony-tailed. It takes all of two minutes before Judy declares that he has a "lovely little bottom" and all of two seconds for Lucy to agree, Tony and I reserve judgement and make a mental note to do an evening of buttock crunches.
Given the choice Lucy (as it is her last day) opts for the "Coastal Route", this comprises a train journey from Llanes and a walk back along the alternative Pilgrims' Route to Santiago-de-Compostella, the real route being down the main road where, faith being what it is, the hardcore pilgrims vie with articulated lorries (semis) for roadspace. In fact in the town we saw someone in monk's habit striding through the town like a religious version of one of the Famous Five on holiday, pack festooned with such items as frying pan and lamp, and probably containing (if you'll pardon the phrase post Da Vinci Code) lashings of ginger beer.
After a quick stroll around medieval Llanes while Alex buys the picnic, we catch the train, the journey went on for some time, some of us realise that this might have a direct effect on the length of the journey back. Before we start back I'll just advise you of some definitions:
"Flat" - the bits that don't go up or down, honest.
"Mainly Downhill" - the bits that are neither flat or uphill, or, possibly describing a transit from East to West, like the sun, where, after midday, its passage is mainly downhill.
"Coastal Path" - at certain points the sea can be seen, contrast this with British coastal paths where, if making an anti-clockwise (widdershins) circuit of the Island, you should at no point turn right.
"Ascent" - not relative to a coastal path, these are only flat or mainly downhill.
At the start, we arrive at the beach, look at it and then turn away for the next hour or so, before arriving at the Bufones de Arenillas, a blowhole which, sadly, isn't spouting, though this does make it a better place to have a picnic than if it had been. This is an interesting experience, like sitting on the chest of a dozing giant as we work our way through another series of delicious cold meats and cheeses, olives skewered by gherkins (some sort of job employment scheme I'd guess), and Judith's favourite, pickled roasted peppers. I have to eschew the chocolate - it is Nestle, eating Nestle will excommunicate me from my family (I am reserving this for an emergency), upon being asked why, I educate.
Having lunched by the flat calm we now turn our backs on it and turn inland to cross the river (probably the Puron) and to stroll through a Eucalyptus wood (Eucalypts are a disastrous cash crop, they take ten years to reach a harvestable state, which is speedy for forestry, and once harvested you discover that nothing else will grow in the soil). We then embark on a series of ascents, or rather, less flat sections of path, during which Alex (who has obviously decided we were slow - or was showing off his pert buttocks to those with telescopic vision) had a phone call from the Head of the Spanish National Horse-Endurance Racing Team, wishing to check out his stables to supply them with a new team - of horses. Later he slows down as the number of calls from friends and family increases, (there would be times in the course of the week where we yearn for news like this, or a disaster, or, in fact, anything that would result in Alex's relentless pace being modified. It's not that he was particularly fast, he was just constant regardless of terrain).
Eventually Llanes re-appears, in the middle distance, wearing a smug, "Where have you been?" look. In Llanes Lucy and Alex disappear into the Bus Station to sort out Lucy's transfer back to the airport, while the rest of us look at the faded glory that was Llanes' Indios heritage (the large mansions built buy the returning successful colonialists, now falling into dilapidation) and the rash of new building of second homes unaffordable to the locals. Hmm? Been here before I think.
We return to the Hotel for a sluice down and a modicum of rehydration, before being taken to a new fish restaurant/sidreria. much to Tony's disgust we opt for a Galician white, (Albarhino) and top it off with a shot of the local digestif.
02.30 Heavy rain.
At the airport I dithered and ended up in Pret a Manger for a breakfast sandwich before dithering over two bottles of Campari which I didn't buy. I tasted some Baileys and then proceeded to the gate for non-boarding - in fact, non-plane. However it arrived eventually and I found a space next to a man with a Berghaus jacket and walking boots.
"Hmmm?" I thought, "Is this one of my fellow walkers, in fact might this be my bedroom buddy?"
He was nuts.
"Oh God!" actually being fervently evoked prior to take-off by said person. "Definitely".
There was a spare seat so I shifted into it and feigned unconsciousness for the next ninety minutes. Ok "Nuts" is perhaps a trifle unfair - aspergic.
We arrived and, on standing uselessly in a locked plane, discovered an older couple in front of me, the lady of whom sported a Pura Aventura label,
"Oh good!" I thought, "People potentially slower than me."
I followed them through immigration, watched my case exit the conveyor, and waited for it to come round again. On leaving, I failed to find the man with the notice, I did find the minibus but not the man. I had a plan, I would stand next to the "Older Couple" nope, they'd buggered off as well. Eventually I was accosted,
"Are you with Pura Aventura?" I was rescued, it was Diego, he introduced me to Lucy - hang on, me, Lucy, "Older Couple", that was four, Aspergic Man was off elsewhere.
No-one wanted the front seat in the bus so, with my natural air of superiority, I claimed it. So we set off and drove down one of the most under-used motorways in Europe built with my (and your -Dear Reader) taxes. The coastal scenery undulates, the motorway doesn't, it flies over concrete viaducts and piledrives through hills.
At the turn off for Hotel Arredondo the tax burden ceases, and we rattle over patchy concrete to the former stud farm. There Mariella is dragged from the kitchen to show us our rooms. Lucy and I are garretted in the roof, where the skylight window sometimes gives my worm's-eye-views of passing wagtails. My room is fairly large, Lucy is in the more traditional head-banging attic, the sort that is called "cosy" in the brochures.
Now all that remains is to occupy the several hours until dinner. I look at my book, it's already halfway through - it will have to be eked. I look at my journal and rue the lack of pen. Eventually I look at the ceiling - it is quite dull, so I decide to look at my book again via a beer. Tony ("OC"- Male) joins me and helps me look at the beer, comparing his with mine. Judy ("OC" - Female) arrives, looks at the beer for a bit and then takes Tony away for a walk. I return to my ceiling and Stargate, in Spanish (well it was either that or Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, and even if that had been in English...).
Finally it's nine o'clock - Dinner Time. My stomach impels me downstairs by the simple principle of placing a gaping void immediately in front of my centre of gravity. I find the others sitting around a table gently salivating. We move into dinner and order a bottle of Tinto - sadly, or not some might say, Lucy turns out to be a Blanco girl. We scan the variety of meat up for grabs and Lucy turns out to be a pescy vegetarian but at least they have fish. Somewhat guiltily I order the cold meat plate and a veal sirloin, The plate when it arrives covers half the table, I share - reluctantly. The sirloin is probably about the same volume as the cold meats but arranged in a vertical profile. the sweet is a sort of cheesecake, with a caramel sauce of exquisite propensities. The meal finished I go to bed and spend the next six hours awake, digesting. Occasionally a waft of cigarette smoke will drift mysteriously through the room like some sort of nicotine-fiend poltergeist. I doze and am awoken by rain battering the roof at 3.25 and then again by the 8.15 train practising blowing its horn.
Breakfast we have been warned is slight.
"Zumo naranja?"
"Si." (Good accent eh?)
"Cafe con leche?"
"Si."
"Tostados?"
"Si." (As you can tell I had got the hang of things now.)
"Huevos y bacon?"
"!"
"Huevos y bacon?"
"! Umm. Si."
Thus, slightly overfortified, I stagger back to my room to squeeze into my shorts and drape a shirt over my breakfast.
Diego arrives (our guide Alex has been given time out to run a horse in an endurance horse race), we say, "Picos!"
He shrugs and says "Cares Gorge"
We drive through the countryside of "Green Spain", which looks a lot like Wales, and end up in Arenas de Cabrales where Diego disappears to buy the picnic and we follow, ending up in a shop that sell the worst sort of tourist tat and chainsaws (electric or petrol) and chamber pots (china or enamel). From there we head up into the massif until the road runs out, and then start on the path, which goes first up, then down, then along. It reminds me of "Cheddar Gorge in Somerset", only bigger, with less parking. Oh, and it's surrounded by mountains. The lunch stop was exceptional, dry cured smoked beef - cor, ham - cor, cheese, cor, other stuff, cor plus free walnuts courtesy of a passing tree! After lunch the girls decided to wend their way back and Diego, Tony and I sashayed on to the first bridge, at this point Tony left us and Diego and I carried on to the dam, declared the gorge "done" and then legged it back, failing to catch the others. We found Tone sheltering from a shower in the road tunnel and so walked down to the cafe for a celebratory beer and the van keys.
So what did we see? several Vultures, some Redstarts, oh yes and a Wallcreeper, lots of vertiginous cliffs, an enormous spring where one of the three massifs empties into the river, some interesting geology, oh and did I say a Wallcreeper? The reason that Twitchers come to the Cares Gorge - the Wallcreeper - did I say we saw one? It did involve leaning backwards over a 100M cliff but hey - a Wallcreeper (Tichodroma muraria).
After a quick shower and a quick beer we hightailed it to a cider barn for an evening of more meat (plus cider). The popular myth is that the cider is undrinkable unless aerated by pouring it in a thin stream into the glass from about five feet up, the glass has to be held at the correct angle to avoid splashing. In order to achieve this one requires the ocular placement of the average prey animal without ruining your, and several other people's shoes. some of the locals can achieve this thin, slow, pour - a bar skill equivalent to "Ringing the Bull's Nose" or getting all nine down when playing "Devil amongst the Tailors" i.e. one learned by lots of practice but in the case of the latter two, less trouser washing.
The size of the cider press lends weight to the importance of cider in the area, the average saloon car would fit fairly comfortably inside it giving one the ability to satisfy two green urges at once. In this Sidreria, the cider is now poured via some strange battery-powered construction. I thought the cider was lovely, Tony found it "interesting" and then dived into a bottle of Rioja, the other two sipped. Diego looked on perhaps regretting the lack of people in the party, that might have turned this into a night of cider-fuelled riot and license. As it is we go home and go to bed.
Rain at 24.00, 01.30, 03.00, and 05.00, then train is five minutes late.
The next morning ( Si. Si. Si. Si.) Alex arrives, he is tanned (I originally misread this as torrid, either will probably do), slim and pony-tailed. It takes all of two minutes before Judy declares that he has a "lovely little bottom" and all of two seconds for Lucy to agree, Tony and I reserve judgement and make a mental note to do an evening of buttock crunches.
Given the choice Lucy (as it is her last day) opts for the "Coastal Route", this comprises a train journey from Llanes and a walk back along the alternative Pilgrims' Route to Santiago-de-Compostella, the real route being down the main road where, faith being what it is, the hardcore pilgrims vie with articulated lorries (semis) for roadspace. In fact in the town we saw someone in monk's habit striding through the town like a religious version of one of the Famous Five on holiday, pack festooned with such items as frying pan and lamp, and probably containing (if you'll pardon the phrase post Da Vinci Code) lashings of ginger beer.
After a quick stroll around medieval Llanes while Alex buys the picnic, we catch the train, the journey went on for some time, some of us realise that this might have a direct effect on the length of the journey back. Before we start back I'll just advise you of some definitions:
"Flat" - the bits that don't go up or down, honest.
"Mainly Downhill" - the bits that are neither flat or uphill, or, possibly describing a transit from East to West, like the sun, where, after midday, its passage is mainly downhill.
"Coastal Path" - at certain points the sea can be seen, contrast this with British coastal paths where, if making an anti-clockwise (widdershins) circuit of the Island, you should at no point turn right.
"Ascent" - not relative to a coastal path, these are only flat or mainly downhill.
At the start, we arrive at the beach, look at it and then turn away for the next hour or so, before arriving at the Bufones de Arenillas, a blowhole which, sadly, isn't spouting, though this does make it a better place to have a picnic than if it had been. This is an interesting experience, like sitting on the chest of a dozing giant as we work our way through another series of delicious cold meats and cheeses, olives skewered by gherkins (some sort of job employment scheme I'd guess), and Judith's favourite, pickled roasted peppers. I have to eschew the chocolate - it is Nestle, eating Nestle will excommunicate me from my family (I am reserving this for an emergency), upon being asked why, I educate.
Having lunched by the flat calm we now turn our backs on it and turn inland to cross the river (probably the Puron) and to stroll through a Eucalyptus wood (Eucalypts are a disastrous cash crop, they take ten years to reach a harvestable state, which is speedy for forestry, and once harvested you discover that nothing else will grow in the soil). We then embark on a series of ascents, or rather, less flat sections of path, during which Alex (who has obviously decided we were slow - or was showing off his pert buttocks to those with telescopic vision) had a phone call from the Head of the Spanish National Horse-Endurance Racing Team, wishing to check out his stables to supply them with a new team - of horses. Later he slows down as the number of calls from friends and family increases, (there would be times in the course of the week where we yearn for news like this, or a disaster, or, in fact, anything that would result in Alex's relentless pace being modified. It's not that he was particularly fast, he was just constant regardless of terrain).
Eventually Llanes re-appears, in the middle distance, wearing a smug, "Where have you been?" look. In Llanes Lucy and Alex disappear into the Bus Station to sort out Lucy's transfer back to the airport, while the rest of us look at the faded glory that was Llanes' Indios heritage (the large mansions built buy the returning successful colonialists, now falling into dilapidation) and the rash of new building of second homes unaffordable to the locals. Hmm? Been here before I think.
We return to the Hotel for a sluice down and a modicum of rehydration, before being taken to a new fish restaurant/sidreria. much to Tony's disgust we opt for a Galician white, (Albarhino) and top it off with a shot of the local digestif.
02.30 Heavy rain.
