The stroll, day four: Llames de Parres to Covadonga

25km, 700m ascent, 500m descent.

We left the Albergue at a reasonable hour, and walked along through deserted villages (deserted because they were in the middle of a two day fiesta and were presumably sleeping before the finale of a massive hot chocolate later that day) until we were diverted along a riverside path. The quality of the paths was a bit better, largely because it was used by the pilgrim route from Gijón as well as the one from Oviedo and that one is a little shorter, less mountainous and more popular. We eventually came out onto the main road between Arriondas and Cangas de Onís and followed the roadside path for a while. That felt a little weird, to be on such a busy road, after having walked for a few days through rather empty countryside (we had seen exactly no other walkers in the previous three days, except at the albergue. All the people we had seen had been working).

Cangas de Onís was a shock too, we had a coffee and watched the hundreds of tourists wandering round, taking pictures in front of the romanesque bridge and the cider pourers.

We left the city and headed up the hill to the south of it past the chapel of St Anthony of Padua, which was behind a grassy square lined with big oaks. We passed the cemetary, one end of which was a building site, making space for the future. It was hot and steep, the path alternated between being a dirt track and a concrete one with the diagonal lines cut into it to give some grip/let water run off. Julio pointed up at a concrete circle above us and said that it was only hard up to that.

We reached the circle, which was a small reservoir, about 25 feet in diameter and 10 feet high, like a lonely swimming pool, surrounded by horses with bells around their necks.

The views became more spectacular as we traversed easy tracks and gazed off down into the steep valleys with the old roads south to Leon. We passed little cabins and farm buildings and a statue erected in honour of shepherds (looked suspiciously like it had been nicked from a B&Q gnome display and put on a posh plinth).

Eventually we started going down, and, apart from one brief section where the path disappeared and we had to thread our way through rocks and spiny plants, we had no problems.

We finally found a gate and once we were through Julio said that was it for the mountains. We followed a track down to a road and hopefully a bar and a fountain. As we neared the town we were overtaken by the bread man who kept stopping and putting the bread in the bags hanging on people’s doors. We admired the plants growing on one house and the old lady insisted that Liz take some cuttings of her plants. A bit further on we found the bar… only identifiable by the crates outside. We went in and asked for shandy (a clara) and a tapa of cheese… the lady looked a little doubtful, there was no bread, she said. Ahh, but we know the bread man’s been, we said. Whereupon it was all okay and she put out a plate of Gamoneu cheese, which was rather nice. She was a bit surprised to have a couple of English folk in her bar… at one side of it was her sewing machine and piles of cloth. A neighbour was having a glass of something at the bar but she left. Apparently there used to be signs to the bar but vandals had torn them down.

We filled our water bottles at the lavadero (the old public laundry house, all over the place here) and continued our descent. Which seemed to go on for ages until, through the trees, we saw the twin towers of the church in Covadonga and heard the complicated peal of the 5:45 bell. Julio stopped and put on a fresh t-shirt and changed his socks (we didn’t) and we marched down to the tourist throng.

Covadonga is the supposed site of the beginning of modern Spain. The military commander Pelayo won a battle here that is credited with starting the reconquest and the end of moorish Spain. There’s a statue of Pelayo, and an imposing church on the hillside, and a shrine to the virgin of Covadonga (who is dressed in what seems to be a carpet, giving her the shape of an inverted cone of chips).

We toured, we walked through the shrine, we didn’t buy mini-virgins, or pictures or postcards. We didn’t drink the water that comes out of the side of the cliff under the shrine.

Then it was on to the bus and off home, via a couple of ciders in Cangas and dinner in a cider house in Fuensanta.