So the big, high bridges continued along the Asturian coast. Obviously if you want a 120kmh freeway you cannot have the road winding up and down the coastal valleys, so the road just goes right over the top of all of them. What is most impressive though is that each bridge has a name. You would think they would run out of names eventually. James by the way had no idea the motorway existed and kept telling us to stop killing cows. Bloody thing has no idea.
After a little while we headed inland, and soon spotted a range of mountains covered in snow. "We will be going around them" I assured Marjan. Well we kept getting closer and they kept getting bigger, bloody impressive in fact. Well I was wrong, "again" according to Marjan, and the road went straight for the mountains and the snow. Marjan was shivering just looking at it. I love the little village at bottom left, and the lighter clouds above the valley, is actually just higher, snow capped mountains.
The lookout where we took that photo is like every other wayside stop on Spain's motorways, it has good signage, a nice exit, good parking, occasionally a table and chairs, and no toilet. The road then headed straight towards a big snow covered mountain, with snow all around us and the trees dusted beautifully with it, and headed right into the mountain. The tunnel came out after four Km, and we felt the need to stop again, this time somewhere with a toilet. We filled the car, and had a coffee to warm us up. Is this an amazing location for a petrol station/bar/restaurant/shop?
Feeling quite justified in avoiding the Picos, which are higher than this, and with narrower roads, we decided to take a little risk. As a semi-planned detour, we got off the motorway, and headed for some minor roads along the valley of the Rio Luna. Some very nice scenery. Also, we managed to find a place to park in the sunshine, surrounded by snowy peaks and have a chorizo and salad roll.
This would be a lovely place to spend some time, we just merely drove through and stopped to take a picture or two.
Eventually we got out of the mountains and on to the high plains of Castilla Leon. Big skys, big plains, big wineries. This was a complete change of scenery and geography from the coastal hill of Asturias and the rugged Cantabrian mountains. After about an hour of this we finally lost sight of all snowy mountains.
As I said we had decided to make this a mostly driving day, so we powerd on through the high plains and eventually I got tired so we stopped at another bar/petrol station/gift shop/hitch hiker drop-off point and had a break. I could have purchased some Asturian Ria Baxas Albariño or a whole Jamon, some pottery or a three course meal, but we settled for a soft drink and a morcilla tapa. Feeling better with morcilla in my belly we headed on through some Spanish high plains pine forests. They look nothing like the German variety, but I was too tired to stop and get proof for you.
We eventually reached our destination: Coca. Coca is, by the way, in sight of a whole new range of mountains. Those mountains seem to have a lot of snow on them. We will tackle them tomorrow. Marjan will make me pay for the cold. The reason for stopping here is that it is handy to Madrid, and, it has the most outrageous looking castle. It really looks fake, but is in fact a 15th century building. It also currently houses an Agricultural College specialising in forestry. Unfortunately it was closed when we got there and we could not be bothered coming back in an hour, so we will probably visit in the morning. In the meantime we settled for a walk around it.
Anyway after six hours or so on the road we are having a night in. Yet again we have the Casa Rural to ourselves, like we had the hotel in Cudillero. Yet again we will be the only people in the restaurant. They are opening early for us at 8:30. Yet again we will probably eat too much. Yet again we will put our heads down after a happy day. I think though we may have a record tonight, for the second night in a row we have individual pillows rather than those hateful single double width pillows they use here. I do love my own pillow!
To answer an avid reader's question. No, not all of our meals have been great. Some have been merely OK. We have not had a dud meal though, and we have had one or two superb ones and quite a few very good dishes. For me it is probably the difference as much as anything. The tastes of things from my past, and the taste of things I normally do not have, the taste of things I just cannot get in Australia. We have tried to have local specialties as well, so the recipes are probably well tried and tested. But the reality is I would feel more confident eating at a Spanish petrol station than at a country Aussie pub. My morcilla today, though not excellent was not bad. Having said that, I look forward to Christmas lunch at said avid reader's house; the food is always decent there and the company is pretty good too.
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