Picos de Europa
Spain'S First National Park, Declared 1918 At Covadonga And Later Extended Across Asturias, Cantabria And Leon; A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Rising To 2,650 Metres Within Twenty Kilometres Of The Atlantic · Cangas de Onis, Asturias
A limestone massif rising to two thousand six hundred metres barely twenty kilometres from the Atlantic, which is the fact that explains everything about it. Sailors coming back from the Americas saw these first, hence the name. The proximity to the sea means the weather is Atlantic rather than alpine: it rains a great deal, cloud fills the valleys for days, and the limestone is deeply karstic with gorges cut through it. Spain's first national park was declared here in 1918 around the lakes of Covadonga, and the area spans Asturias, Cantabria and Leon. The two things most visitors do are the Cares Gorge, a path cut into a cliff face above a river, and the Fuente De cable car, which lifts you eight hundred metres in four minutes. Between them are villages that make cheese in caves, and a road system that is far slower than any map suggests, because the massif splits the region into valleys that do not connect to each other.
Cangas de Onis, Cangas de Onis, Asturias, 33550, Spain
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED, and the park has none: it is open country with marked paths, no gate and no ticket, walkable at any hour. What has hours are the mechanical bits. THE FUENTE DE CABLE CAR keeps limited daytime hours, closes in wind and cloud, and its LAST DESCENT is earlier than people expect. The BULNES FUNICULAR runs its own timetable. In summer the COVADONGA LAKES ROAD CLOSES TO CARS with a shuttle instead. High roads close for snow.