Asturias

Time was passing quickly and there was so much to do. I could have stayed at Wolfgang’s headland for a week. Each morning the tide was out and the rocks fully exposed and there was always someone pottering about out there with a fishing rod or a net. We walked along the 'tempestuous beach' once the weather improved and also visited the local town, Muros.
It was here that I started to wonder why there appears to be a flourishing fishing industry and yet (as far as I know) there isn’t one in the UK. I don’t think that Scarborough or Whitby have fishing boats like these any more.

This is Sunday afternoon in Muros where yet again we saw the Spanish weekenders. They sat happily in the quayside cafes whilst their kids played on bikes or kicked a ball around. There wasn’t a tv screen in sight and little evidence of Euro 2016.
We decided to eat Pulpo once more as we would soon be leaving Galicia and enjoyed it with a bowl of mussels this time. It was funny going into the cafe at 8pm and asking if we were too early. “No it’s OK - we’re ready for you!” the cheery waiter said and so we had a window seat looking out (as it was too hot in the sun for once).
We packed and got ready to move on and unfortunately had to cut the Galicia north west corner off and headed inland, past Compostela again and then north east to the coast in Asturias. It’s always difficult to make choices on a trip like this - if you don’t keep moving then you don’t get the full experience, yet if you like somewhere, you need to stay a little to be able to appreciate it.
An overnight is usually too short but spend just two full days somewhere and you feel as though you know it. So we often stay for three nights, arriving mid or late afternoon and leaving mid morning.
There are always some folk who seem to need to leave a site at the crack of dawn to move off somewhere. For me this is the best time of the day, It’s cool, quiet and breakfast outside is lovely so I don’t like rushing off.
There are others who are so early that they arrive on a site by mid-morning. Invariably these are the motorhome “wild campers” who have decided that they need a bit of civilisation for a day or so. So they come direct from a “camp” on the nearest harbour wall, spend time working out the best pitch, then levelling the vehicle with wedges. Then they hit the washing machine, the waste water disposal and the toilet waste point.
Meanwhile we are having a leisurely breakfast and then we pack-up and move on. Here, as in most “European” countries we never need to book. There’s so much coming and going on campsites that they always have room unless it is mid-summer and you have left it until late evening to arrive.

So we picked a site in Asturias that’s on the Cool Camping website (www.campingtauran.com). This is 3.5kms off the main road down a single track road, past a farm and then onto a headland.

It’s a site that has been owned by Dutch people but they recently sold to a couple of Spaniards. They have yet to master the art of welcoming guests and instead of the Else and Herman “Please sit down on the terrace, now what would you like to drink?” welcome at Quinta Valbon, we were given a key for the barrier, a paper with our arrival number, and these were handed over along with a bit of a scowl. They won’t get far in this business, that’s my prediction - once a few hundred thousand people have read this blog they won't.
The site is 30 or 40m above the sea which is inaccessible due to the cliffs. However you can not only view the sunset, at this time of year from the same spot, you can see the sunrise too! How about that? We got to see two great sunsets and unfortunately didn’t take any pics (well they all look the same don’t they?)
Well no actually, they don’t. There was a layer of dark cloud stretching across the horizon and somehow this made it look as though the sun was sinking into the sea in front of the horizon. I don’t know how this illusion occurred but it was as if an egg yolk was slowly sinking. Magnificent!
The local town Luarca was a short drive away but once we tried getting there in the Landy and had almost given-up trying to park, we decided to walk next time. It’s only about half an hour, cutting the corner off using the lanes, which includes an amazing view down into the harbour. In fact the whole town is located at the bottom of this steep ravine and again the focus is on a vibrant fishing industry.

We watched as a small boat came in after a trip. I assume this was a day’s fishing but what do I know?

Papá was operating the winch as Chico located the crates. They unloaded the boat in quick time and it was amazing to see what had been caught. Maybe he’s a conger eel specialist as I think this is was they are (in the main). There were no nets on boards just a series of big floats with lines wrapped around them. So this is true line-caught fish.

Are there quotas? How does the Bay of Biscay support small boats like this? Maybe there are just more fish around. Who knows? It just looks right and proper that when you go to a fishing port you see fish being unloaded in the harbour!
Just along the coast, no more than ten minutes drive, was a great beach for swimming and surfing. We looked the part, driving the Landy along the pebbles and sand at the back of the storm beach but the truth is that the rest of the day trippers were doing the same in their cars! The water was much warmer than it had been on the Atlantic coast at Wolfgang’s. When I took the plunge there I could hardly catch my breath it was so cold. Here it was bracing but manageable, although my swimming trunks weren’t holding much together by the time I got out.

It was our anniversary so we had lunch out (probably only had six meals out in the whole trip). The local dish here is Fabada Austuriana, which is very much like a cassoulet and that worked well with Spanish omelette.
Eventually it was time to walk up the three hundred plus steps out of town and back through the farming hinterland to the campsite.

Here we had great fun on a slack line with the greatest view.