Day 17 – Picos de Europa

Mountains in the clouds.

Last night we stayed within the mountains of Picos de Europa a nature reserve and one of the national parks of Spain. Brown bears, eagles, white-head griffon vultures and wolves are living here in wilderness. During the night I heard some strange sounds around the camper car. But due to the absolute darkness I saw nothing. In the morning I found animal excrement around. Perhaps from the goats which are also living here in the wilderness.

Some white-head griffon vultures are circling above us.
Are they hungry? I heard, they only eat dead animals.

The place where we stayed is nearby Bulnes, a mountain village with approximately 40 citizens. Until the middle of 20th century this mountain village was totally isolated and not reachable by road or any other modern means of transportation. Until then the citizen have been self supporter with less contact to other people. Meanwhile a funicular was build up to connect Blues to the rest of the world.
Along the track we see a lot of abandoned houses or farms. It must be hard to life here, faraway, isolated and self-sustaining.

In many villages we see „Sidrerias“. Somebody told me, that within Castile, there it is no vineyard cultivation. The people here prefer a drink which is similar to cider.

A Sidreria in Las Arenas.
Flat iron building?
It is an abandoned store for local products. On the sign you can see what they have offered in the old days.
Rush hour.
Some locals in the coffee bar where I was writing the blog
A lot of old house along the road.
We followed the Rio Cares with a lot of places for wild swimming to leave the Picos de Europa.

At the end of the day, after driving endless zigzag roads up and down we arrived at a small town nearby Torrelavega.

Schreibe einen Kommentar

Deine E-Mail-Adresse wird nicht veröffentlicht. Erforderliche Felder sind mit * markiert