We move to the coast. We are spoilt for choice. It’s a proper Atlantic coastline with lots of tide swept beaches. We go to Ribadesella where the campsite is a 10min walk from the start of the promenade and about 35mins from the old town.
It’s beautiful with superb detached houses just behind the prom. There are no fast food outlets or kids amusement parks or crazy golf. Just a couple of tasteful beach-shack type café / bars and a lot of beach.
The sea is enticing and we get organised to go for a dip. The waves are bigger and stronger than they look and a couple knock us both over. Apparently they can pull your bikini bottoms down as you get rolled in the surf.
On the prom. there are showers and so we can wash off the salt and get sorted. I expect it would be very busy here in July/August but in October it’s quiet.
In the old town we wander and watch people. We try to judge just when it’s time for the evening meal but it’s tricky. We opt for a beer instead and eventually get somewhere near the church and eat dinner there.
As we eat, we listen, without understanding, to a Spanish couple at the table next to us. They have two kids who are being fed Kinder eggs and then shooed off on the one bike they share. Meanwhile Mum and Dad drink beers and consume a lot of cigarettes whilst discussing music. It must be that because we heard the word Killers.
In true Spanish style they are oblivious to the other diners around them. They talk very loudly but not as animatedly as, say Italians. It’s quite funny really although it rather limits our own conversation.
The next day we again walk the length of the promenade, over the very long bridge and into old town. Then we walk to the end of the point and up to the top of the hill. This is a popular spot and affords a great view across to the town and along the beach.
We bump into a campsite neighbour, a Dutch guy who is very keen to explain that he lives in Friesland and speaks that language as well as Dutch and English. He uses the English a lot and I ask him why he speaks it at the campsite, when talking with a young woman and a Spanish guy. That’s his daughter who’s a thirty-something but hasn’t yet found, what her father hopes, is a good job and a settled down life. She’s living here on the campsite with the guy who’s a bit of a surf dude, come barman, come live with mum in the south of Spain in the winter, kind of thirty-something.
I can see his concern, he wants the best for his educated daughter and isn’t sure if she is pointing in the right life-direction. However she sounds as though she might hitch a lift back to Friesland with them. So he’s hopeful of a change. He’s probably wanting to get travelling soon.
Just behind the town is a network of caves, the Massif of Ardines, proper caves that have been explored for years. One of these caves, Tito Bustillo Cave, was only opened-up in the early 1970s after being accidentally found by a group of very young potholers in 1968.
They had casually abseiled into a hole and then somehow stumbled into spaces unseen for 30-40,000 years. A carbide lamp went out and the flash it gave upon being re-lit, momentarily showed cave paintings. They had found a Palaeolithic cave which was later found to have been abandoned those years ago after the entrance was blocked by a huge land slip. The cave paintings are amongst the best Palaeolithic art in Asturias and apparently that’s saying something.
Access to the cave is limited to a very few people and tickets are booked up well in advance. However an exhibition, the Tito Bustillo Centro de Arte Rupestre, of the discovery and cave paintings and interpretation, has been very tastefullly constructed and we visited that instead.
It’s definitely autumn as the weather doesn’t know if it’s summer or winter. Each day is a little unpredictable, made worse due to comparing and contrasting the Met Office and BBC weather apps. Today it’s sunny when we go into the cave exhibition and pouring down when we come out.
It’s going to be wet for 24hrs, that seems certain and so, because we can, we go back to Camping Picos de Europa and the warm amenity block with that swimming pool. It isn’t far to go.
That evening there’s another ‘Spanish’ event. It’s funny how these things happen. All the Northern Europeans tend to disappear into their vans during the evening. This is mainly because it’s dark and quite cool or cold. Just when it all goes quiet and you think “that’s it for the night”, the Spanish come. In this case a motor home and a campervan pick a spot very close to others.
Six kids and four adults emerge and it’s like the middle of the afternoon. Tiny kids are running around and the adults talking as if they are miles apart. Just when you think they are going to go to bed, they start cooking. It’s so very late and funny and Espanish.
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