Checking Our Walks

A beautiful clean path thanks to farmers and their cattle.

Asturias is a living landscape with plenty of vibrant vegetation. With the help of the sun and the rain this vegetation grows quickly, often covering paths and tracks making them difficult to follow. It’s normally the farmers with the movement of their cattle that keep these paths clear and prevent them from being “taken” as the locals say. Many of the walks in our self guided walking notes use these tracks so it’s important for us to revise the walks periodically to see what condition the paths are in, and be able to advise our guests accordingly, or adjust our notes.

A very overgrown or "taken" path

Despite the fact this last month has been much wetter than normal we’ve had a chance to get out and check the conditions of some these paths and revise our walking notes. At the same time we always keep our eyes open for any new paths; sometimes opened up by farmers or made for forestry purposes, and sometimes we come across tracks that we didn’t know existed which could be useful for new walks.

So here are a few photos showing some of the walks we’ve been checking:

The Basilica at Covadonga and the start of the walk to Cangas de Onis

The point where I got lost on the Covadonga to Cangas walk, our notes definitely needed revising here!

Trying to improve one of our coastal walks.

but “will guests want to walk this close to the edge” we ask ourselves?

A gem of a find; a new path (for us) which will soon be a part of a new walk from the hotel

Enjoying the hay!

Preparing the hay is very definitely the hardest job on the farm. You’re out sweating under the hot sun; cutting, turning and moving the hay, and there are always those itchy bits of grass that get down your back or in your shoes. 

Preparing hay

Raking hay ready for baling

Then you rake the hay over and over again looking for bits of prickly unpalatable weeds and getting scratched in the process. I guess it’s no wonder that many a time during the hay harvest I ask myself; do the sheep really appreciate all the trouble we go to so as to make them such nice hay?

Moving the straw bales

Stacking the bales of hay in the stable

Then the cold wet days of winter come and the sheep are often left nibbling unenthusiastically at the nutrient deficient bare pastures. That’s when I go into the stable where the bales of straw were nicely stacked in the summer and spread a bale of hay into the sheep’s feeding frame. Then it’s time to stand back and watch the sheep munching on the hay with a satisfied smile on their face and that’s when I feel satisfied too, knowing that all that hard work harvesting the hay really is appreciated.

Happy sheep and this is when you realise all the work has been worth while