We also drove up the valley side to the north of Arenas de Cabrales, hoping to see it from a well known viewpoint but it was too cloudy We did have a customary wander around the hamlet of Asiegu and found a cheese maker and the evidence of a fence-maker cum artist.
We have got a little braver with our cheese choices and confidentiality pulled the curtain open at a very small artisan cheeser. The lady was over in the high risk area (well she had the white boots and hairnet that I’m familiar with) and indicated that she’d be a couple of minutes.
I was happy to observe the process which was simple. She moved the stirring paddle around in the milk for a while, measured the temperature and then the magic happened. She poured a pint of beer into it. Well that’s what it looked like. It obviously could have been some other special ingredient.
Then she came to see us. Knowing that we are English don’t help the conversation as she didn’t modify her Spanish and couldn’t speak Ingleesh.
What we did glean is that she had no white Cabrales cheese available but would we like to try this blue? She scraped off a sliver and offered it to us. Wow I was ready to run for the higher hills. As well as tasting a bit too blue for my liking, it was so strong that we could hardly manage to say “no thank you” It’s powerful stuff but someone buys it. Just not us Gracias y adios.
An artist / sculptor made some very nice railings above the village. There’s a path there along which the cows walk or maybe they used to walk but somehow they occasionally fell over the edge. It sounds a bit crazy and they must have had fences.
Anyway someone who likes cutting out cow shapes has been rather clever. They have taken a sheet of steel, cut out a cow shape to leave the outline and then mounted the cutout cow alongside its outline. A sort of negative - positive cow group. This was then repeated for other cow shapes (yes cows have their own outline) and the result is a long fence of cows.
The artist bit though is the placement of this so that the sun can cast shadows around the shapes. Apparently if you watch through the day, these shadows move, invoking memories of those walking cows. Unfortunately we didn’t stay long enough to see any shadows or indeed whether or not the real cows still walk there.
It’s strange as that milk must come from somewhere but I’ve not seen evidence anywhere of any milking parlours.
In all these alpine villages the farmers use tiny tractor and trailer combos.
In Las Arenas they are unhappy about what looks to be a proposed anaerobic digester. I think the objections are usually because of lorry traffic bringing in the fuel from outside the area.
I managed to find a bakery that was a mini factory. It was a little strange to just walk in and be served by an operator, lifting the bread almost straight from the tin.
He regretted wanting to try his English, as I started to explain about working in a big bakery in Manchester. I think all my observations about the one in Whitefield wouldn’t have been very useful here.
The bread was nice and what else matters? Well profit helps too!
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