Riding the Picos again: Day 3 Weds 17th July
Last night I loaded two trips onto the GPS - up to the Picos and back again. Today I rode those routes, 229 in miles in total, 6 ½ hours of riding. The trip starts out with about 30k of dead straight road, but it is rather beautiful, in a golden landscape and with almost no other traffic. You see your destination, the Picos de Europe in the distance that gets ever closer until you are winding up ever tighter bends, then round a stunning turquoise lake on your left at Riano. But a twist takes you from bright sunshine into low cloud and the temperature falls to about 15 degrees, then there is green again and you are in Cangas de Onis. That’s where I fill up with petrol in a slightly grumpy petrol station and afterwards park up by the road by a car wash and munch my baguette and cheese and speak to H on the phone about the death of a friend of a friend.
So I am heading into the second, longer route that I plotted, on this road AS-114 east to Panes, then a turn to the right, south towards ever-busy Potes, then after missing my turn in the town centre, and turning round, a fork off to the left and back into the mountains. Lots more turns, most of them easy in 3rd or 4th gear but one or two in 1st gear including a famous lookout that I remember riding through on my last trip in 2013 only from the other direction – but it was covered in low cloud then too and nothing was apparent to be looked at apart from the statue of the animal – what was it? A giant hare? After this point the road surface gets worse and big trucks full of gravel are blocking one lane. The new stretches of tarmac, never more than a mile, are lovely to ride on though without centre lines which are important on these twisty roads where vans and cars often come toward you taking up more than their own lane. Eventually I get down to flat ground at Guardo, tired from that type of riding, and really relish the long straight back to where I am staying.
One question I asked myself was would I feel more confident riding this twisty route than I did when I first came here six years ago? I think the answer is for sure. It was (mostly) a beautiful and enjoyable ride.
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