Picos

  Potes, Spain
Thursday, November 1, 2007

Fishing port in San Vicente de la Barquera

When our ferry arrived in Santander we still hadn't decided (or even thought about) where to go in Spain. As we disembarked we made a last minute decision to head towards Portugal via the Picos de Europa. On our way we stopped at San Vicente de la Barquera. It was still quite early (and a national holiday) so we didn't go around the town, instead we sat by the fishing port and enjoyed the morning sun.

Picos

We then headed on into the Picos, a mountain range that from the distance looks snow topped, but is actually limestone crags. We drove through the valley alongside a river with steep rocky cliffs on either side. Then the road started to climb up into the mountains and we overlooked the landscape of forests with steep limestone rocks protruding from them. It is a beautiful time of year to see the Picos, because the foliage is changing colour and parts of the mountains looked golden yellow and amber. Areas of the narrow winding roads were crumbling into the valley below; we crawled up in 2nd gear, hoping not to fall off the steep cliffs.

The cow we chased down the road

Along the way we stopped at several places; Potes, which is a quaint little town, as well as stopping at laybys and admiring the view. In the distance we could hear the tinkling of cows bells. Herds of cows are left to freely roam around the mountains and therefore all wear bells around their necks. At one point we came across a cow that had got itself trapped on the road. We chased it for about half a mile until it stepped aside and let us past.

Lake Riano.

We stopped briefly at Riano to overlook the beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. We pulled up next to a car with its engine running, but the driver was fast asleep (we think). Dad checked the car to see if there was a hosepipe running from the exhaust into the window...there wasn't...hopefully he was alive!