Welcome to part one of the Michael Marks diaries! These are reproduced with the kind permission of Michael who travelled in July last year on a tailored Picos self drive holiday. I think this diary captures the essence of our holidays in the Picos. These are effectively unedited excerpts so present a warts and all review of a Pura holiday to the Picos de Europa National Park in northern Spain. Hopefully you will enjoy Michael’s take on the world!
Day One
Landed in Spain this afternoon, picked up our car and followed the north coast road and then south into Picos. Found hotel (Posada San Pelayo) which is very beautiful.
After settling in we walked up to the next village of Lon to find a place for dinner. We were walking so long that we thought we were going the wrong way so walked all the way back to get the car. Of course we discovered the restaurant about 100m further than we had walked.
Ordering was very difficult but had a lovely meal served by Kat from Ecuador.
Had usual ‘car getting stuck in small village’ incident which was quite scary. Hil did well to stay calm throughout.
Day Two
We both slept really well in our lovely bedroom. Breakfast was beautifully served and included fritesia (little pancake things, fried and covered in sugar…yum) as well as really nice bread and coffee.
Then we drove to our first hike, stopping in Potes to buy picnic of ham, bread, cheese, fruit and water. The walk started off steep…and got steeper…eventually after several stops and 2 ½ hours we got to the chapel – our target. Greeted by wonderful views and running water to replenish our supplies.
We sat and enjoyed our picnic with beautiful views and met the only person we had seen on our walk…John from Yorkshire who was looking for work….strangely at the top of a mountain.
Then we came down precisely following our directions. We came to a bit where we weren’t sure and opted for the downhill route. This descent wasn’t very pleasant with difficult steep downhill bits through woodland and lots of flies. We became quite tired but eventually got to a bit we recognised afrom the ascent and realised that we would come to the village where we started & where the car was. Although this was wrong we were very pleased as we were knackered. We’d done the steep shortcut!
Went back to our beautiful hotel and sat in garden where I consumed two huge gin & tonics.
Out to Potes for a meal, we plumped for open air town square meal & we both had some lovely trout just simply fried/grilled. Very yum. Back to hotel and slept like a log.
Day three
Woke very excited about breakfast and yes, the mini pancakes were there again.
Decided to do walk 12, Fuente Dé – Horcados Rojos – got another picnic at Potes – same stuff and drove to Fuente Dé where we got a cable car to the plateau half way up the mountain.
From the top we started walking up and up and up across difficult craggy limestone terrain totally different from the previous day – no woodland, just bare rock. There were more people this time but not too many.
We were sitting down having a rest when I jokingly turned to Hil and said “Busy here ‘innit?” as 2 or 3 people passed by. The man sitting near to us said “Don’t worry, were’ going in a minute.” He and his wife turned out to be Dutch. We exchanged amusing pleasantries for a few minutes. I like the Dutch!
After more climbing and crossing of ice fields (unbelievably) we decided to have our lunch perched on a couple of rocks. No sooner had Hilary made up her beautifully structured ham and tomato sandwich than the big birdies arrived. Hilary went ballistic and I thought for a brief moment that she was going to throw herself off into the blue yonder…..lunch was abandoned at this point.
We carried on upwards for a while but when we had thought we reached the top, we hadn’t. We learned that we had another ¾ of an hour to go. We were tired at this point and still had a long journey back down to the cable car. We decided to call it a day and head back. We had learned from the day before that going down can be just as hard as going up!
On the way down we saw some rock climbers going up what looked to us to be a very scary thing to do. The Dutch couple were also coming down and watched them with us. There followed a tense half hour watching them and discussing the world cup. I told him that the British were only good at sports where we were able to sit down…rowing, cycling and horse riding. I also mentioned that rock climbing probably wasn’t very popular in Holland!
Anyway, none of the rock climbers fell off so we trudged back down and made our way to the hotel where we had more gin & tonics.
Read part two of Michael’s diaries.
Read part three of Michael’s diaries.
Find out more about Pura’s holidays to the Picos de Europa.