Few mountain ranges anywhere stand so close to the sea. The Picos de Europa rise to over 2,600 metres barely 20 kilometres inland, their grey limestone walls catching the first Atlantic light — the peaks that, sailors said, told them Europe was near.
The excursion typically takes you to the mountain town of Potes, with its stone bridges and Monday market, and up to Fuente Dé, where a cable car climbs almost vertically to a viewing platform at 1,800 metres. The panorama over the valleys and back toward the coast is among the most dramatic on the whole journey.
A landscape of the senses
This is also the land of Cabrales, the powerful blue cheese cured in mountain caves — tasted, of course, with a local wine.
