Picos – Day 5
Cares Gorge / Garganta de Cares
17 June 2016
Distance: 24km
Ascent/descent: 430/430 m
Total time: 6h20′
The Cares Gorge is one of the most popular walks in Spain, with over 200,000 visitors a year. Although it’s not a mountain walk, by unwritten convention it’s a compulsory day for this holiday. And quite rightly so, say I. Álvaro had saved it for the day with the worst forecast and true to form it rained more or less the whole day.
The River Cares separates the Central and Western massifs of the Picos de Europa. The gorge it has carved is over 600 metres (2000 feet) deep in places with near-vertical cliffs. Even in the grey and the rain it is truly spectacular. At the lower end of the gorge near Poncebos there is a hydroelectric power station powered by water brought from the top end along an aqueduct. The aqueduct took about 10 years to complete and was finished in 1925. For much of its length it was tunnelled through the rock with just enough height to accommodate the flow. Elsewhere it runs in the open. The original path created to service the aqueduct, traces of which you can still see, followed a much more precipitous route than the current one which was built between 1945 and 1950. Most of the path is more-or-less level, although slight undulations mean that you see the flowing canal sometimes above you, sometimes below.
We were able to park at the roadhead, saving the short walk up from Poncebos. From here there is an initial climb of 250m followed by 100m descent, all on a clear and easy path. Then the track is almost level, generally well-surfaced though prone to puddling in wet weather. I won’t try to describe the walk in any detail, just to say that at every twist and turn a new view opens up. Rock tunnels become more frequent as you get nearer the end, and approaching the dam at the head of the gorge after crossing two bridges there is a series of longer tunnels where a torch (or your mobile phone’s flashlight function) will be useful.
Once past the dam another bridge takes you across the now much wider river and into Caín, where you will find a selection of bars and restaurants, and tourist shops selling Cares Gorge merchandise. We’d all been going at our own pace, singly or in small groups, and had got quite spread out so people arrived at our nominated bar (the first one in the village proper) over half an hour or so. Our setting-off times were similarly staggered, and the way back is simply to retrace the route. I walked the 12km without stopping and arrived back third at the parked minibus, having failed to catch Stuart, who’d set off before me with the other Petts Wood Boys, and Dean, who had shot past me earlier, caught Stuart and walked with him to the minibus.
A word about the Killer Goats of the Cares Gorge. With its steep walls the Gorge is prone to stonefall. Semi-wild goats graze the cliffs and it’s not uncommon for them to dislodge stones which fall onto the path. Where this has happened recently you see (as we did) rocks the size of bricks buried in the ground, and craters where they have impacted and bounced. It is a genuine and objective danger of the walk and we were warned to keep our eyes open for goats on the ground above us whenever that was possible. The risk was brought home when Dean, walking on his own on the way back, was narrowly missed by two large stones which fell in front of and behind him.
My Viewranger track had serious problems keeping contact with the GPS satellites in the deep gorge and especially in the overhangs and rock tunnels. Sometimes it would have been picking up reflected signals too, so don’t place too much reliance on the route it shows!