It's also rather dangerous. Unbeknownst to you, when you were stuffing your daughter's jacket into your rucksack, wife and child have taken 'what looked like a shortcut' - concentrating on fitting everything back into the bag, you blindly follow, not noticing that the main path goes up and to the left. You're now close to the edge of a big drop and the path seems a lot smaller than it was.
Ten minutes later ...
"I can't believe the authorities signpost this path as a suitable route. You'd never be allowed to do that in England. Do people really take small children up here ?"
Fifteen minutes later ... the path is between a foot and eighteen inches wide. We've climbed enough to make going back probably more hazardous than going on. To the right, at the edge of the path, a drop to the river several hundred feet below.
"Walk carefully - stay as close into the hill as you can. This is dangerous. They must be crazy to designate this as a route"
"I wonder if we should have gone left instead of straight on when the path split"
"WHAT !"
We had to keep going. About another half mile and maybe thirty minutes on, our tiny path zig-zagged up to join the broad main path, which we'd been following a couple of hundred feet lower down the ravine. We'd added a somewhat twitchy hour to the walk time. And I swore never again to just follow without keeping my eyes open.
Walking on, the ravine opens out - higher up you can fill your bottles with clear, cold river water.
And then you come to what seems like a mirage - an oasis for hot, sweaty walkers, a dream of paradise, a beer advert come to life.
There's a fountain of cool drinking water, shady trees about a river, a small bridge. And about six bars and restaurants! Bulnes was presumably once a very cut-off village - but a funicular railway cut through the mountain (and free to locals) now means that all the wants of the climber or tourist can be brought up.
After a walk like ours, to sit under a sunshade and sip a chilled beer feels very good. And the descent is a great improvement on the ascent - even the heat's less, with the ravine now in shadow. Lovely place - I can see why people rave about the Picos de Europa. Will come again.
10 comments:
That little bar would be a very welcome sight after that experience!
Those are the kinds of mountains I like, ones with bars on top of them and roads or railways up. See also Snowdon, the Sierra Nevada near Granada and one in Switzerland with a view of the Matterhorn.
Looks great, Laban.
The trouble with our Snowdonian equivalent is that it's like a motorway service station without the perks. It stunk worse than me walking boots.
Laban-you certainly deserved your chilled beer after a hair-raising walk like that !
So... Good holiday then.
The difference twixt that and Snowdon is that there's another 4,000 feet to the top peaks. Bulnes is on a little plateau surrounded by yet larger mountains. Still a bit of snow on the north face of the highest we could see.
It really sounds absolutely fabulous. Enjoy, apart from the child-difficult bits.
Nothing like threat of death to make you feel alive
Scary, but what a sense of achievement you must have felt to have made it in one piece. You definitely deserved that cold beer!
Try levada walking in Madeira, equally fun and scary.
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