21st- 24th August Picos de Europa, Posada de Valdeon
Left Leon to drive to the Picos de Europa (mountain range). The most stunning drive into the mountains with spectacular views. Camped up in Posada de Valdeon for three nights, a small picturesque hamlet. Beautiful sunny day but with a bit of a chill in the air as we are about 800mts above sea level here. Amazing views all around. It is a really quaint village. All the men were on the village green playing boules, skittles, throw the metal puck at the metal post and toss the coin into the frogs mouth!!
First day did a really tiring walk up to a plateau overlooking the valley. It took 5 hours and was really hot on the return. It was definitely worth the effort though. We saw royal eagles, griffin vultures and Egyptian vultures. We heard wild boars in the undergrowth. There are wolves, bears, deer and wild goats in the valley, unfortunately we haven’t seen any of them. Sat outside our beast admiring the views and chilling on our return.
The second day we took on more of a challenge. There is a very popular gorge walk about 5 miles from where we are staying so we road our bikes down the 5 mile hill to the start and completed the 5 hour gorge walk. It was fantastic. The path is hacked out of the hill side with a vertical drop at the side, it also skirts in and out of tunnels. We did see some mountain goats. Fortunately we knew after we finished the walk there was a bus back up the mega steep 5 mile road back up to our beast. There was no way I could have cycled the 20% steep 5 mile road, the little bus struggled. We did however nearly lose a bike as they were split between two buses and the bus in front didn't stop at our village it drove off without unloading the bike!! Fortunately our very nice bus driver went and retrieved our bike. Totally crackered after all that.
