Walking from the Hotel to Ribadesella

The bar at Terenes with its garden overlooking the coast, very suitable placed on this walk!

When the hotel is shut I spend quite a lot of time walking; sometimes exploring new peaks and other times revising and improving the self guided walking notes we have for our guests.

One of the popular walks with our guests is the walk from the hotel to La Vega beach along the Fito hills. This walk takes about four and half to five hours. Most guests then get a taxi from the beach back to the hotel but it’s also possible to walk on further from La Vega to Ribadesella. We hadn’t got the walking notes for the second part of this walk so on Saturday Joe and I checked out a couple of new foot paths on this route and wrote the notes for the second part of this walk.

The Fito hills with the sea in the distance

The first part of the walk from the hotel takes you up to the Fito hills and follows tracks with magnificent views all the way to the Berbes golf course before you walk down to the La Vega beach itself.

Woodland tracks on the walk

To walk on to Ribadesella from La Vaga beach takes about an hour and a half. First you go through the small hamlet of La Vega and then along a very small lane to Terenes. On route you have the possibilities (at low tide) of taking a minor detour to visit the dinosaur footprints at the bottom of the cliffs. This part of the Asturian coastline is known as the Jurassic Coast for the number of different places where you can see dinosaur foot prints. There are also a couple of well placed bars at Terenes one with an out door garden with lovely views over the coast.

Dinosaur footprints on the cliffs at Terenes

It’s not so far from Terenes to Ribadesella where you can enjoy the beach and promenade as well as the the river estuary and old town. From Ribadesella it’s possible to get the narrow gauge train back to Arriondas.

The river estuary at Ribadesella

This is one of the many walks that are possible to do from the hotel with out a car. There is much more information on the different walks in the area in the self guided walking section on our web page.

The Fito hills and morning mist

Preparing the Vegetables

The greenhouse full of vegetable seedlings and plants.

Come April and we will open the hotel and the restaurant once again. That will mean lots of evening meals to prepare and lots of vegetables to pick clean and cook. Although we open in April, for our guests to be able to enjoy our freshly grown vegetables a lot of work and planning starts many months earlier in the greenhouse and on the vegetable plot.

"Cebolleta" or sweet onions, planted in October to be ready for the first guests in April

At this time of year we are particularly busy sowing and producing plants ready to plant out as soon as the danger of cold weather has passed away. We built the greenhouse last year with the idea that we could start sowing earlier, raise the plants in the protection of the greenhouse and produce larger plants which would come in to cropping sooner when planted outside.

Lettuce growing in the greehouse as well as strawberry plants

Now the greenhouse is bursting at the seams with small plants and seed trays as many different seeds start their cycle of life. Tomatoes, peppers and aubergines are some of the plants which take the longest to produce, sown in January they spend three month in the warmth of the greenhouse before planted out in late April. Other plants have a much shorter cycle such as lettuce, cabbages and spinach and these are ready to plant out in less than a month from sowing.

Lettuce planted outside in cloches for an even earlier harvest.

Oats growing in different vegetable plots as an overwinter cover crop.

This year we have also sown our midwinter sowing of mangetout and broad beans in the greenhouse. In previous years we have made all the sowings outside starting in mid October and finishing in mid February. However most years any peas and beans sown outside in mid winter soon get found by the mice which eat the seeds before they get a chance to germinate. So this year with the mice defeated we hope to be picking mangetout and broad beans for an even longer season

First flowers on the broad beans sown in October outside

Mangetout from an early November sowing starting to climb up their suports (hazzle twigs.)

It’s not just sowing and planting which has to be done at this time of year, the vegetable beds themselves have to be prepared. Many will have been sown with a ground cover crop of oats in the autumn so as to protect and nurture the soil over the winter months and prevent the valuable nutrients being leached from the soil by the winter rain. Before planting the beds the oats have to be pulled out by hand (and composted) leaving a lovely friable soil full of life. Other jobs include turning the compost, as well as weeding and mulching beds

Turning the compost.

Yes it certainly takes a lot of work to try and produce a steady supply of home grown vegetables for the hotel but it’s very rewarding seeing everything grow and in such a natural way in harmony with nature. Its also very rewarding seeing all the lovely food in the hotel restaurant prepared from these home grown vegetables and as for it eating it hmmmm.