Pico Pienzu

Friday was spent mostly travelling from the UK (Stansted) to Spain (Oviedo). Mal and Morag met the four of us at the airport and we collected the hire car. Not the VW Touran I had booked but a Dodge Journey which Frank came to refer to as the Behemoth. It could seat seven people but as we discovered it was a bit of a pinch to seat 6 people and all their luggage, so it is just as well that the drive to the accommodation was only around 1.5 hrs.

They wanted 10 Euro per day for each additional driver so Frank said he would be designated driver for the week. At that stage he hadn’t seen how skinny some of the roads were, or how much the drivers going the other way preferred his side of the road :-)

Steve has a photo of the inside with all the luggage stacked up but we only the one below, taken after a walk one day. The photo of the right is of Posada Del Valle where we stayed. The balcony was outside Carol & Steve (left) and Mal & Morag’s (right) rooms. We were around the corner – windows on the white wall.

View from our room.

On Saturday we decided to do something relatively easy so Joann recommended the walk to Pico Pienzu from the Fito viewing point which was a short drive from the hotel. Pico Pienzu is only 3km from the sea and among the highest coastal mountains in Europe. The views of the Picos de Europa and the Asturian coastline were outstanding but unfortunately the photos don’t really do it justice.

It was a moderate walk to start with but the last part was very steep and it was blowing a gale at the top. I think it ended up being around 10km with about a 670m climb. We saw Asturian ponies, lots of cows and calves, goats (all wearing bells) and some Griffin vultures from a distance.