Moving into the Picos

 We spent a few days at Camping Picos de Europa at Avin-Onís, on the road between Cangas de Onis and Arenas de Cabrales, where the toilet block is warm and clean and there’s an indoor pool that is large and airy. A few lengths were swum and washing was done in one of those huge machines that can cope with an army and everything comes clean in minutes - 34 in fact.

We didn’t use the even bigger tumble drier, as the day was warm enough to get a line up and save the planet from more heating. Actually that machine scared the bejubus out of me. It’s the only tumble drier I’ve seen that has a huge metal extraction flue that would be suited to a large wood burner. One evening after dark it was on and there was fierce orange glow from the back of it. I think it uses a flame of some sort to warm the drying air. Truly a monster.

Whilst being tucked away at the bottom of the serious slopes on the north side of the Picos, the big peaks can’t be seen way down here in the valley. In fact the sun was also reluctant to rise above the skyline, although it readily set. The result was some very slow mornings, with temperatures in single digits and a very heavy dew. Along with most of the site we didn’t really get a wiggle on until the sun finally shone on us.

Just down the road is a popular spot from where you get one of the famous views of the Picos. This is the 550m west face of Naranjo de Bulnes, a big lump of limestone.

In the hills behind us there’s a cave where cheese is stored, even nowadays. The walk up to Cueva Oscura  seemed easy enough; not many kms but a bit of height. Well Pythagorus tells us that a relatively short hypotenuse and relatively long opposite side, will result in a big theta and so it was. We had a very steep walk up access tracks and across the higher pastures. It was very rural, as is the whole of the region and we again liked to see the cows and they didn’t mind us and neither did the cowherds moving a few of them along our track.

We gained about 500m height and enjoyed expansive views. The cheese cave is definitely in use as it’s protected like Fort Knox, so we did a little research to learn more. This is Gamonéu cheese which matures in this and other caves in the Onís region of the Picos. The cave air is the correct temperature and the humidity is very high, just right for the maturation part of the process.

Just in case you can’t imagine what maturing cheeses look like, here’s a picture I prepared earlier.

Also we were under the flight path of Griffon vultures and spent several minutes watching them through binoculars. What a life they lead.

On the return I failed to grab a pic of the back of a truck that passed us on the way down. There had seemed to be a lot of ‘farmer truck’ activity and even some guys wearing hi-viz. Only when we saw the huge wild boar strapped to that truck did we realise what had been happening. The fellas looked very happy. One boar down, stock and crops protected and no doubt a happy restauranteur somewhere.