Picos – Arrival and Day 1
Arrival
11 June 2016
A ridiculously early start from a crowded Stansted Airport got me to Bilbao Airport arrivals hall around 1100. The instructions from Exodus were to look for someone with their sign and to join the group. Two had been in the seats next to me on the plane, but I had no idea how many more to expect. It turned out there were 16 of us, the maximum this trip takes. Our guide for the week, Álvaro, was the man with the sign.
It’s more than two hours from Bilbao to Arenas de Cabrales and the Hotel Torrecerredo, our base for the week. A drink on the terrace, unpacking, a wander into the village which was hosting the end of a 70-odd km mountain marathon, and – later – dinner filled the rest of the day.
Cabeza Juan Robre (870m)
12 June 2016
Distance: 12km
Ascent/descent: 875/685m
Total time: 8h10′
“Start them off easy” is good advice when you’ve got a self-selected group of unknown ability, especially when the week’s walking has been sold as “challenging”. Our objective for the day was a peak north of the village, from where we’d walk further east to be picked up in the two minibuses for the journey back. It was the equivalent of a single Munro.
You can see the summit we were heading for from the hotel, at the top of a 200-foot cliff. There is, of course, a way to the top ’round the back’, so no climbing involved. We stopped for elevenses on a col on the way, attracting the attention of first one griffon vulture, then another until we had a dozen or so circling around. We hoped they were just looking for discarded sandwiches.
Our summit is not the highest top on the Juan Robre ridge, but has much better views. I had thought of suggesting a short detour to the highest point, but when I saw the ground between I realised it would be rather pointless – no path, just limestone and grass hiding ankle-breaking holes to reach a dull rounded top. Local knowledge is a good thing.
We came down from the summit to the col below to have lunch by a disused shepherd’s hut; two huts in fact, one for people (with a chimney) and one for animals (no chimney). Signs of occupation still survived, perhaps only thirty years since the hut was in regular summer use. In the first room was a box bed and rudimentary storage, the back room had a cooking hearth with an iron pot-hanger and a few other bits of basic equipment. There was no running water, no obvious toilet facilities. Odd bits of string, wire and leather were scattered about and tucked away in cavities in the walls. It was a glimpse of a way of life that was commonplace only a generation ago.
From the lunch stop it was generally downhill through valleys and woodland. At the bottom we stopped at Fuente la Batuva, a spring flowing into a trough, to refill our water bottles. Álvaro was delighted to find newts and leeches in the trough, fishing out a newt to show us and explaining that their presence showed that the water was clean and pure. The leeches were left undisturbed.
There was then a short sharp uphill pull through a grass meadow to a grassy col, followed by a long gentle descent to the road and our minibuses. By the end of the day the good news to me (and Álvaro too, I expect) was that we all managed ok. Miranda was frequently at the front, as she was to be all week, but no-one was struggling.
My Viewranger track for the day.