Orinoco Flow(Enya) - A Day on the Coast of Asturias,Spain

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The break of day at just after 8am revealed another great day for sightseeing and we have enough ideas to do locally all with a 10km radius part of which will be a good walk down to the lighthouse at the end of the peninsula.

We decided to save the walk until the early afternoon so we can have lunch at one of the 3 or 4 bar/cafes in the small village of Ovinana about 1km away and then carry on down to the lighthouse.

The owner of the apartments had suggested Cudillero as a good place to visit. His English was reasonable but from his description we weren’t sure exactly what was there to sightsee.

However we took him at his word and headed off down the local road avoiding the highway on this occasion.

The road wandered around through small settlements and took us under the E70 where we got a spectacular view of the underside of the twin viaducts just down the highway from where we turned off to the rural apartment yesterday afternoon.

It was hard to estimate the height of the concrete pillars from the valley to the road surface but it must have been at least 70 metres.

Having crossed under the highway the road then took us down to the coast by way of a steep decline and at the bottom was the seaside town of Cudillero which we were looking for.

Before we got too close to the town itself it was obvious that we should take a car park in a large area set aside about 400 metres from the town itself.

The town has a sizeable fishing fleet and many of the small vessels could be seen just off shore fishing as we came down the steep hill to sea level.

We rounded the last bend walking towards the town and it became very evident why parking was best where we had chosen.

The buildings of the town, reportedly founded by Vikings when they roamed the Atlantic looking for places to plunder or settle, were densely contained in a narrow valley that would its way up the hill with houses and other buildings all looking to be on top of each other. It reminded us of the small seaside towns on the Cinque Terre in Italy.

The town is geared to tourism and the plaza just near the entry to the climb up the hill was full of restaurants and the owners were getting themselves ready for the expected arrival of passengers of 3 tourist buses that we had noticed arriving in the car park as we walked towards the town. They probably expected us to join the lunch crowd as well but we have other plans for a later lunch.

A market was underway in and around the plaza too for both tourists and locals alike.

We wended our way up the one road that ran up the steep valley. On both sides there was a mix of shops and homes although some of the houses did not look occupied.

There was even a retirement home squashed in amongst all the other buildings.

The only other apparent way for locals to reach their homes if they did not front the one road was to climb steps which in many cases were steep.

Upon reaching the outskirts of the town we turned around and walked back down noting that although the locals also drove their cars up and down the hill that seemed hardly wide enough for one car.

We called into the church in the plaza o the way down as there had been a stream of tourists coming out the door when we arrived at first. Now we had the interior almost to ourselves.

Spotting a couple of fishing vessels returning to the walled harbour we walked out to watch them negotiate the low swell rolling in from the Atlantic.

It would have been a peaceful scene if it hadn’t have been for workmen installing rods into a crumbling rock cliff side using some sort of ramming device driven by a diesel generator. The noise was deafening and we walked to the other end of the harbour wall to try and get away from as much of the noise as we could. It was a little quieter but still noisy enough to mean that we just stayed to watch the two fishing boats’ roll ‘their way o the sea swell into the harbour.

Visiting the town had been a very worthwhile exercise and an excellent referral from the owner of the apartments.

We retraced our path back towards the apartment but first driving to another referral for sightseeing at what is known locally as ‘The Beach of Silence’.

We didn’t actually get there though as the road down the steep hill to the beach was very narrow with very old looking and broken tar seal and no barriers on the ocean side of the road. It reminded us of the Montenegro incident from 3 years ago. There was nowhere to park even to take in a view over the beach so we returned to the apartment for a short rest before doing our afternoon walk with lunch on the way out.

The small settlement where the apartment is located runs into the village of Ovinana and it was a flat road surface to walk to the centre to where there is a small collection of shops and cafes/restaurants servicing the local population of about 500 people who live in houses on good size blocks of land scattered over the peninsula.

As is often the situation with properties in isolated areas the owners keep dogs to patrol the boundaries and keep out any unwanted intruders. And such was the case here with one particular dog following us down the long boundary from one corner to the other barking loudly. Gretchen had worked out in earlier walks that you can tell if a dog is really friendly when he is barking by whether its tail is wagging at the same time as they are barking. This one didn’t have a wagging tail so we picked up the pace of our stride and vowed to walk on the other side of the road on our return journey.

The centre of the village looked very quiet and we began to doubt we were going to get any lunch knowing also that there was still 3km to the lighthouse plus 4km back to the apartment and we were now rather hungry.

However, no problem as although there didn’t look to be any action in the bar/cafe we chose, the place was open and there were people inside for although the sun was shining brightly the little breeze was just a bit cool to be sitting outside. After ordering tapas of patato in aioli and croquettes along with a couple of local beers we did try to find a spot at a table outside out of the breeze but gave in and ate our tasty lunch inside.

You always get bread before your meal arrives in Spain and we have not got to realise that there is an extra charge for this whereas we had originally thought it came free of charge. However it is has always been worth the extra €1 as the bread has been fresh with a crunchy crust and keeps you going until the main course arrives.

Refreshed and full after a hearty lunch we strode off to the lighthouse along the road through the locals houses until we reached open land in the last kilometre to the lighthouse itself.

The lighthouse is relatively new in terms of lighthouses only being built in the 1950’s and there was no access to the lighthouse itself.

However we were here for the stunning views up and down the coast and also the spectacular views of the cliffs below the lighthouse. One didn’t want to get too close to the edge as there would have been no way back if you slipped. It must have been at least 100 metres straight down to the ocean.

The walk home took just as long as we had estimated and that included being on the other side of the road when we came to the property with the snapping dog.

One of the interesting features of many of the property’s we passed is a storage building that many of them had. They were elevated square buildings under which the owners parked their car. The buildings were used to store and keep harvested vegetables dry and away from vermin such as mice and rats. Not dissimilar to the way Maori used to store their vegetables etc in a pataka although the buildings here were higher up in the air than the Maori pataka.

The 8km walk had taken us about 1 ¼ hours of walking which we thought wasn’t bad for us considering we don’t have the fitness of the old days.

We had dinner a little earlier than we have been doing recently so we could take the car back towards the lighthouse for a view of the sunset at 9pm.

It wasn’t a bad sunset viewing although there was a little cloud which meant we didn’t actually see the sun drop into the sea itself which would have been possible had the sky on the horizon been completely clear. The sun disappeared about 3 or 4 minutes before the official sunset time. However it was still pretty good with different shades of red as the sun declined in the sky and into the cloud.

It has been an excellent stay with more local sightseeing that we could have imagined and we got a taste of local life with our lunch in the bar/cafe.

Tomorrow we head south picking up at least one of the Camino Way trails as we do so.

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