High Mountain Walking; Torre Cerredo

Landscape of the high Picos taken from the summit of Torre Cerredo.

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Today is national holiday in Spain and the busiest time of the year for the tourist industry in Northern Spain. Yes there are lots of people in the area but it is still possible to get away from the crowds by going to some of the less well known mountain regions such as the Ponga Mountains or by climbing high up into the Picos.

With Sebastian providing extra help in the hotel I managed to take a two day break last week and climbed the highest peak in the Picos de Europa Torre Cerredo with Hugh (who helps on the farm.)

The Canal de Amuesas near the begining of the walk with the village of Bulnes at the bottom

We started Tuesday morning at Poncebos (218 metres) situated at the beginning of the Carres gorge and climbed to the Refuge “Jou de los Cabrones” (or git’s hole) at 2100m where we stayed the night, and saw an amazing sun set. The following morning we climbed the summit of Torre Cerredo (2648 m) and then made the full descent back to Poncebos passing by the famous Naranjo de Bulnes.

Nigel on the long ascent to the summit of Torre Cerredo

This might not be every guest’s cup of tea with an accumulative ascent of more than 2,500 m, over 10 hours walking on the second day plus a night in a refuge with no toilets or washing facilities and where you (try to) sleep like sardines in a hot tin. However as you can see from the the photos the scenery was fabulous and for me it was a fantastic experience.

The refuge "Jou de los Cabrones"

Above the refuge with the sun setting over a sea of cloud; the Carres Gorge in the foreground and the Western Massif behind.

It is possible to see and experience this type of scenery; the shattered limestone and Karst of the high Picos from some other (relatively) easier walks such as the ascent to the “Mirador de Ordiales” or to Jou Santo and these can be done as day outings whilst staying at the hotel. You will find more information on these and many other walks in the Self Guided Walking section of our web page. There is also information on some very leisurely walks along the coasts or in the mountains for those who want a gentler time. That’s Asturias something for everyone!

The famous "Naranjo de Bulnes" with its 500m verticle rock face, a real challenge for rock climbers.

A family hotel

All the family working in the hotel

For the first time we have all four members of the family working together at the hotel. Our daughter Samantha is working for the whole season and our son Sebastian started working mid July working for a six week period before he goes to England as a volunteer at the Schumacher College. Sebastian has been helping a lot with the hotel web page, translating certain documents we produce, serving in the restaurant at peak times and helping on the farm. So it really is a “family hotel” at the moment.

Our small diverse organic vegetable garden.

Over the last months we have been producing a lot of new information sheets in a series which we have entitled “How and Why”. These are documents covering different topics, mostly related to the farm, with the emphasis on sustainable, mixed organic farming techniques. They are intended for people who want more detailed information on these topics, and who may have an interest in starting or running a small-holding, allotment, or growing vegetables in their back garden. Some of these documents have been the base of previous blog entries but there are two information sheets covering new topics; one on biodiversity and one on organic farming versus industrial farming. These are two topics we fill very passionate about.

Biodivesity on the farm

On the farm there is always a lot to do and last week we made our traditional hay stack or “palancar”, and with that we finished all the work with the hay for this season. More information on how we make this traditional hay stack.

This years traditional hay stack.

The Nutrient Cycle

Cleaning the sheep stable once a year

When we harvest vegetables or fruit, either for ourselves or for our guests, we are removing nutrients from the vegetable garden. So how do we replace those nutrients and keep the garden fertile and healthy, so it can go on producing lots of delicious food for everybody? The answer is, as always, lots of hard work!

Traditionally, there was always a cyclical flow of nutrients within each farm. But when farming became industrial agriculture, the nutrient cycle became a linear system of nutrient flow. Artificial fertilisers were brought in bulk onto the farm, agricultural products were taken in bulk off the farm, and somewhere in the middle of this high-input high-output production system, what was once a prized commodity became a polluting waste. We’re talking manure, and lots of it.

Two piles of sheep manure; this years on the left, and last years(more rotted) on the right.

On our farm, we have ditched artificial fertilisers and gone back to a cyclical flow of nutrients. Which means that someone has to get very dirty once a year and spend a week mucking out the stable. In local parlance this muck is called “cucho”, and a year or so later, after it’s sat in a pile outside the stable being acted upon by natural processes, it’s known as “cutrina”. Cucho is a nutrient-rich but rough mixture of hay, straw and sheep-droppings, which is too strong to use on plants; whereas cutrina is a nutrient-rich and ready-to-use mountain of lovely goodness. We hoe it lightly into the soil of the vegetable garden, or lay it on the surface as a mulch and let the living things in the soil do the hard work for us (earthworms mainly, who drag organic matter from the soil surface down into the soil, making it more readily available to the roots of plants). The fruit and vegetable plants think it’s all their birthdays and Christmases rolled into one. So a big thank-you to our sheep, who not only keep the grass short in the orchards and provide lamb for the hotel restaurant, but keep us well-supplied with nutrients for the vegetable garden too.

Kitchen waste ready for composting

Then there’s the compost, which is another way of converting “waste” into a valuable input. Our compost has many ingredients – kitchen scraps, grass cuttings, prunings, muckings-out from the chicken shed, weeds, old hay and straw, nettles, to name a few. And once it’s all composted down we get another rich source of nutrients to go onto the vegetable garden. For more information on our composting techniques please see the blog entry from 8th May 2009.

A Cape Gooseberry plant well mulched with compost.

But doesn’t all this mean a net inflow of nutrients to the vegetable garden? Aren’t we simply taking nutrients from the meadows and pastures, and, by means of the sheep, transferring those nutrients to the vegetables and fruit? This is not a cycle, but a linear flow! Well, what we are aiming for are nutrient-poor meadows and pastures (because less nutrients in those areas makes for greater biodiversity – please see the blog entry of 7th August 2008), coupled with a lot of nutrients in the vegetable garden, as that is the most productive area of the farm. Also, we must view the farm and hotel as a single system, in which case we can see that most nutrients are indeed cycled within the system. For example, weeds are taken from the vegetable garden and composted, and that compost is put back onto the vegetable garden. As another example, vegetables are taken from the garden down to the hotel kitchen, from where the peelings and scraps are returned to the garden via the compost heaps.

Sheep grazing in the "Cuevona" meadow

A linear flow, unlike a cycle, must have both input and output. The only input of nutrients into this system is the food that we can’t grow ourselves (we grow about one third of all food eaten in the hotel), and the only output is what gets flushed down the toilet. If anyone has any safe sane suggestions of how not to lose that from the nutrient cycle, let us know!

The food we serve

Catalan tartlet a vegetarian dish with tomatoes, courgettes, onions, capers, raisons and egg.

Last year, we conducted a study of the food that we serve in the hotel, as eaten by our guests for breakfast and evening meal. We wanted to know, in percentages by weight, how much of the food is produced by ourselves, and where the rest of it comes from. It was very pleasing to find that about 30% of the food is produced on the hotel farm. Over 15% of the rest is bought directly from certified-organic local small producers. We bake all our own bread, cakes and desserts from basic ingredients, representing another 20% of the food consumed. We buy about 30% overall from a specialist organic distributor. It’s also worth mentioning that over 98% of all the products used in the hotel restaurant are certified organic.

Freshly baked bread

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But what does this mean?
When 30% of the food we use is produced by ourselves, that means a lot of fresh food, so a lot of preparation time in the kitchen – scrubbing, peeling and cutting vegetables and fruit – no ready-prepared packs just waiting to be opened and cooked. It also means the cooking has to be adjusted to what is available and in season. Growing and farming are weather dependent, and however hard we try on the farm, we don’t always get a continual supply of the same food all through the period when the hotel is open. Most of the food is seasonal, and this means that the kitchen has to adapt to what is available from the farm at any particular time of year

Mangetoute peas in the vegetable garden waiting to be picked.

For example, in April there are normally lots of mangetoute peas, then broad-beans in May, an abundance of raspberries and strawberries in June, plenty of beetroots in July, courgettes from July to September, peppers in August, and so it goes on. And it’s not only the vegetables that are seasonal: the chickens lay lots of eggs as the day-length starts increasing in March and April; our lambs are at their best by July, having fattened up on the spring pastures; and then there is the apple harvest in October. True food is seasonal.

Sweet peppers harvested in late summer

Imaginitive cuisine.
When I asked Joe what she thought was the most characteristic thing about the hotel cuisine, she said it is cooking with what is available. This means making the best use of what we have in the vegetable garden at that moment (or what is available from other small producers, or the market, or wherever), and using imagination in the way the food is prepared.

Preparing a "salpicon" salad in the kitchen

Roulades are an excellent example of adapting the dish to what’s available. Roulades can be based on so many different ingredients – such as leaf-beet, leeks, or carrots for savoury roulades – or on soft-fruits for dessert roulades, such as raspberries or strawberries. And when you get a glut of beetroot, for example, it can be roasted with cheese as a vegetable to accompany the main course, or used to make soup, or served in a salad with an orange mayonnaise, or served marinated in honey – and of course in a roulade. It’s all about imagination and creativity, and Joe certainly has those when it comes to food.

Fresh soft fruit dessert

The result is a tasty, varied and healthy cuisine, using lots of fresh produce. It’s often only a couple of hours from the time the food is picked to the time it’s served on your plate.

Picking raspberries in the afternoon ready for the evenings desserts

Local products and varieties.
Is the food we serve typically Spanish? Probably not. But because of our belief in using local varieties and races, the food we serve is based on a lot of genuine Asturian products. We often grow local varieties, and even produce the seeds of some of them so as to help maintain those varieties, as is the case with our onions, dried beans, and maize. Our apples are all Asturian cider-apple varieties. Our lamb is the indigenous Asturian race the “xalda”, now recognized by the slow food movement. Our beef comes from another indigenous breed, the “casin”, or Asturian mountain cow, which we buy direct from a young organic farmer called Angel Merino. Angel grazes his cattle on the Sueve Mountain range just 5 kms from the hotel. We buy a whole cow, which gets sent to the slaughter-house, and then we go to the cutting-house to supervise how it is cut for us and to help pack it. We then have a whole cow, with lots of different cuts of meat, and imagination is needed again to think of ways to prepare the different cuts. Maybe we will serve fillets with a mild “Cabrales” sauce (Cabrales is a local blue cheese), or a stew with peppers and tomatoes, or maybe we will make sausages and serve them with caramelized onions (onions from the vegetable garden of course, and from a variety which has been saved in the village for 40 years now!).

The farm with the Asturian xalda sheep grazing in the orchard planted with Asturian cider apples

One thing is sure – a lot of work, time and effort are put into sourcing, growing, preparing, and cooking the food that we serve in the hotel restaurant. However, to serve food which not only tastes good and is healthy, but embraces our beliefs, respects the environment, and supports local communities, is a reward in itself for us, and hopefully for our guests too.

A day out in Pre-Romanesque Asturias

As a Spanish national born in the province of Palencia (Castilla), I grew up with the backdrop of the south face of the Picos Mountains but I lived in the UK for a number of years until recently returning to settle in Asturias. Spain is a beautiful country and as a Castilian I could be biased and invite you to visit the region I come from but instead I will invite, and guide you on a short journey which hopefully will introduce you or add to your awareness of Asturian pre-romanesque art. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this form of art, it is also known as “the art of the Asturian monarchy” which is unique to Asturias and was created when the region first became a kingdom while Spain was under the influence of the Muslim world. It spans the period between the VIIIth to the XIth centuries A.C. The style can be divided into three different periods coinciding with the reign of three different kings. Several examples are found around Oviedo, the capital of the region.

San Miguel de Lillo - Monte Naranco Oviedo

I will provide you with a very short and somehow simplistic history lesson. The Picos Mountains have always provided this region with both a protective and isolating barrier that has enabled Asturias to develop its own character and culture since pre-historic times. When the rest of the country was under the political and military influence of the Muslim world (Cordoba in the south was the capital of the Muslim empire), the Muslim hold on Asturias was less consolidated than in the rest of the country and in time, a group of noblemen started to fight back in a effort to re-conquer the region thus giving rise to the Asturian Monarchy and the beginnings of what today represents Spain. During that period the Asturian Monarchy developed a unique form of art and architecture that incorporated artistic influences from previous cultures such as Byzantium, the Visigoth, the Carolingian and the “Mozárabe” (Spain’s Muslims who converted to Christianity) and thus pre-romanesque art ensued characterised by tall buildings, built using pioneering engineering techniques. This new art style was applied to all forms of art including civil and religious architecture; in time, its influence spread across Europe. Personally, I enjoy this form of architecture and art with its tendency for heights and balance, basically I think it is an exquisite form of architecture and the location of the buildings is often magical.

San Salvador de Valdedios Villaviciosa

There are numerous sites that you can visit, several are within easy access from Hotel Posada del Valle and can easily be done in a day. I personally invite you to do all or part of the itinerary that I describe with what I consider to be the main highlights. If you aim to visit all the sites, I would advice you to check with the tourist office for opening times and have an early start.

El Conventín -Villaviciosa

Starting at Posada del Valle, drive to Oviedo city on the motorway and as you approach the city on the right is our first stop, “San Julian de los Prados” where you will be able to appreciate its architecture and the best examples of pre-romanesque Frecos. Our next Visit will take us up to the Naranco mountain on the outskirts of Oviedo with magnificent views of the city where you can visit some of the most famous pre-romanesque sites: Nuestra Señora del Naranco and few metres away, San Miguel de Lillo, two exquisite buildings with many surprises. By now it should be around lunch time and if you drive back to Oviedo city you can have lunch in the old quarter called “El Fontan” where you can see one of the only civil engineering examples of pre-romanesque arquitecture, a pretty fountain. While in Oviedo, if you make your way to the cathedral, you can visit the “Holy chamber” (Camara Santa) where you will be able to see a pre-romanesque canon barrel vault supported by columns carved in the shape of the 12 apostles, these sculptures are the highest quality stone carvings within this form of art, I never tire of visiting them. Within the Holy Chamber are some exquisite examples of pre-romanesque metal work, the most famous is the “Victory Cross” given to Don Pelayo (the founder king of the Asturian monarchy – the cross now features in the Asturian flag) and the box of agates that incorporates a much earlier and priceless Carolingian broach. You may also decide to have a quick walk through the cathedral museum to enjoy some of its pre-romanesque sculptures, triptics and metal work amongst its many treasures.

San Pedro - Villanueva de Cangas

On the way back to Posada del Valle, you can detour near the beautiful town of Villaviciosa to visit San Salvador de Valdediós and the Conventín, next to each other and nestled within a luscious green and cool valley- sunset is very peaceful here.
A last visit near home is the Church of San Pedro in the village of Villanueva de Cangas, outside Cangas de Onis with delightful stone carvings in the archway and the eaves around the outside. There are many other sites worthwhile visiting around the region but in my opinion, little surpasses a day spent amongst such works of art.

San Pedro - Villanueva de Cangas

Entry by Luis Laso Casas

More information about Luis and his artisan work; mosaic and furniture restoration (in Spanish)

Hay harvest and appropriate technology

After 4 days of intensive labour last Wednesday we finished the first part of our hay harvest. Inspired by the success of using our hay as fodder for the sheep last winter, this year we wanted to harvest as much hay as possible, even though the hay harvest is the most demanding work we have on the farm.

There are different ways of cutting the grass (and storing it when dried) and this is where the dilemmas come; deciding what is the most appropriate method of cutting the grass and how best to store it.
You need to take into consideration that only a small part of our farm is suitable for tractor use, most of the farm is on a steep slope and some fields have a many small rocky out crops. Hay harvest needs to be done whilst there is good dry weather and you never know how long the good weather is going to last. So once you have started you want to get it done as fast as possible in the case the weather changes, (the hay will most probably spoil if it gets too wet.) In choosing a cutting method we also take into consideration how sustainable the chosen method is, its environmental impacts, and the culture and tradition behind hay harvesting.

This year we used three different methods for cutting our hay, they were a hand held scissor mower, a strimmer fitted with a hay cutting blade and a scythe. The method we used in each area depended principally on the terrain.

José Luis (Andres's father) with the scissor mower.

Andres’s father came to cut our largest flattest field with his scissor mower. The machine (over 15 years old) is very well suited to moderate slopes, and it is by far the fastest way of cutting. One person goes in front to check the grass being cut doesn’t clog up the machine, one person guides the machine and one person goes behind clearing the grass which has been cut from the grass to be cut. It uses a relatively small amount of petrol for the amount of hay it cuts. This enabled us to get a large area cut at the beginning of the good weather period and start the drying process as soon as possible.

Dried hay waiting to be bailed

.I used our strimmer fitted with a special blade for cutting hay, this was done mostly in the areas where there are stony out crops. It would be impossible to use a scissor mower here and hard going with the scythe. The strimmer is the least environmentally friendly method and one of our more questionable practises, but it does help us maintain some of the species rich habitats and helps get the job done when time is a premium.

Nigel useing the strimmer in a stoney area

The scythe is the traditional method for cutting the hay and many small fields in Asturias are still cut by scythe. We started using a scythe last year for cutting the meadows and this year cut well over a third of the total area with the scythe. It’s a pleasure to watch a person use a scythe and is the most sustainable method. Most places can be cut with a scythe except in amongst the very rocky areas.

Hugh cutting with a scythe

We wanted to bale as much hay as possible this year as it can then be easily transported and stored. A tractor comes to bale the hay, but we only have one small meadow which is accessible for the tractor. The hay we cut from the other meadows we transported by tractor this year (as we were moving it up hill) where as last year we used a wheelbarrow to move about 300kgs of hay!

One of many journeys last year with the wheel barrow moving 300kgs of dried hay.

Jaunra moving 300kgs of dried hay in one journey this year

When you start to think about the different possible ways of cutting, transporting and storeing hay it’s a good point to reflect on appropriate technology.

Appropriate technology (AT) is technology that is designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, social and economical aspects of the community it is intended for. With these goals in mind, AT typically requires fewer resources, is easier to maintain, and has a lower overall cost and less of an impact on the environment compared to industrialized practices. The term is usually used to describe simple technologies suitable for use in developing nations or less developed rural areas of industrialized nations. It is also often used by communities more interested in a sustainable lively hood. Appropriate technology usually prefers labor intensive solutions over capital intensive ones.

The term intermediate technology (coined by E. F. Schumacher) is similar to appropriate technology. It refers specifically to tools and technology that are significantly more effective and expensive than traditional methods, but still an order of magnitude (one tenth) cheaper than developed world technology.

Tiggy (one of our cats) inspecting the hay
So what’s the appropriate technology for us to use to cut hay?

“Endemic” flora on the farm.

Anthyllis vulneraria ssp. iberica, ladies finger (a subspecies of kidney vetch) – endemic to the coastal zones of western Europe.

“Endemic” is a word that gets bandied around quite a lot, yet by itself it tells us nothing. If a species is endemic, it means that the species is unique to a particular area (or habitat/ecosystem), and does not occur naturally outside that area, and for this to be meaningful we need that area to be defined also. Some defined areas can be very small (northern Spain) or very large (continental Eurasia), and the habitat/ecosystem can range from localised (the Fynbos on the southern cape of Africa) to extensive (the Mediterranean basin). In reality, any species can be referred to as endemic if we broaden the definition enough – even the omnipresent annual meadow-grass (Poa annua) is endemic to Planet Earth (probably!).

Now that the dry science is out of the way, we can get down to the farm. Of the 345 flora species we have recorded so far, none are endemic to the farm! But the natural ranges of several are restricted enough for us to refer to them as endemic, as long as we define the area. One species and one subspecies are defined as being “endemic to the Cordillera Cantabrica” – the Cordillera Cantabrica being the 480km long mountain range that runs from País Vasco (the Basque Country) to Galicia, via Asturias. Four other species and two subspecies are defined as being endemic to larger areas than this, but are still quite localised when viewed from a global perspective.

Saxifraga canaliculata (a saxifrage with no English name) – endemic to the Cordillera Cantabrica.

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Crepis albida ssp. asturica, the Asturian hawksbeard (unofficial English name) – endemic to the Cordillera Cantabrica.


Helictotrichon cantabricum, the Cantabrian oat-grass (unofficial English name) – endemic to the Cordillera Cantabrica, Pyrenees, and the north of the Iberian peninsula.


Linaria triornithophora, the three-birds-flying toadflax – endemic to the northwest of the Iberian peninsula.


Teucrium pyrenaicum, the Pyrenean germander – endemic to southwestern France and northern Spain.



Genista hispanica ssp. occidentalis, the western subspecies of Spanish greenweed – endemic to southwestern France, and the north and centre of the Iberian peninsula.

Narcissus bulbodicum, the scented narcissus – endemic to southwestern Europe (southwest France, Spain and Portugal).

But, however you define endemic, there’s always plenty of stunning flowers to enjoy on the farm!

Entry by Hugh Taylor