It’s good when mates visit

La braña Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

Anne and Noel came for the weekend (if you’re reading this blog and you don’t know who they are; who are you?). It was great to see them and I think they had a good visit, it’s not that we had a checklist prepared but I could develop one for the weekend Asturias experience.

Drink Sidra, check; eat fabada, check; visit the mountains, check; visit the coast, check; eat something with chorizo in, check; eat fine seafood (in a place once visited by Woody Allen), check; drink Rioja and figure out it’s not all like the stuff we get in England, check; eat your breakfast in a bar, check; narrowly avoid collisions with boy racers on windy mountain roads, check; see how umbrella use is endemic, check;

To be honest I didn’t go to the coast with them because I was a little under the weather (and I had to work) but Anne came back with tales of Horreos (pronounced ‘orri-oss’; those square barns on four legs that dot the countryside), pipes and medusas (the spanish for jellyfish).

We did a couple of walks at the weekend. One was the Cares Gorge in the Picos de Europa (I had planned something higher but it was pretty cloudy and the forecast was for rain, I did not want to spend the whole day with zero visibility). It was pretty wet, although stunning, as ever. My book of walks and climbs in the Picos says that you should do the Cares Gorge no matter what the conditions are, because you’re guaranteed a good day out. It’s about 11km each way, with a stop for lunch in Caín that was definitely welcome at that point… well it let us go from sopping to merely wet before we set off back. I don’t have any photos because I looked at the forecast and left my camera in the flat (Anne blogs about it here). The other walk was up to a lake called El Lago del valle in the Somiedo national park. I had planned a longish walk from one of my guidebooks and the walking group folk had given me a colour copy of the area on a 1:30000 map. We set off a little late and did a slightly shorter version but it was still really enjoyable. After we negociated a few cows on the path (I’m always worried by cows, especially when they have calves with them, as these did. They always look like they’re just waiting for you to put a foot wrong) we ascended one side of a large valley to it’s head, where there was a big tarn. The tarn had been extended, it had some additional walls at the front. On our return route, along the other side of the valley, we saw old aqueducts collecting runoff water from further down the valley and distributing it to the tarn. The valley was full of brañas, thatched cabins that were (and by the looks of it in some cases, still are) used by vaqueros (that would be cowherders, or maybe cowboys) who used to come from the coast and spend the summer with their herds up in the high meadows.