Phew! What a last few days in Galicia and Leon.
This area of Spain is so different to the southern areas of the country and Portugal that we saw over the last few weeks. The Valley of the Rio Sil had been planted with chestnut trees and have been worked for centuries, their uppermost branches trimmed regularly to leave trunks thick, gnarled and hollowed like those trees in the haunted forests that have eyes that watch and arms to grab.
Farmers grow vines on the slopes of impossibly steep mountains. Monasteries, long abandoned and dug over, were visited. One had a shrine to a long dead saint in an old chestnut tree and scattered around a roughly carved image of the man were offerings, quite a few Euros, bangles, notes seeking help, euro millions tickets, all asking for good luck in these bad times, I guess.
We walked around the 2000 year old Las Medulas Roman gold mines through an amazing Wild West landscape of oddly shaped red peaks. The Romans mined the hills by digging tunnels through which they fed water from a network of canals to collapse the cliffs. We walked into one of these tunnels. Incredible!
Coincidentally, we were reading Ben Taylor’s blog that he had just posted and he had photos of the Picos we travelled through today. We, like he, had many Wow! moments, however, the clouds rolled in every mountain or two and later in the day we lost the sun altogether, so if these photos don’t inspire, have a look at Ben’s.
We reached the north coast and tonight are in Llanes, resting up before we head towards the Pyrenees by Saturday.
Looks like you found another folly! Lovely pics and blog. Travel safe.