See more photos on Jess's blog: theadventuresofmoon.blogspot.com
Woke up to fog and a chilly morning. Jess still has a funny tummy so we are going to starve her today. Suddenly heard 2 very large explosions that were rockets being let off and it turned out to be a Fiesta today for the village. Got chatting on the road outside the campsite to the locals and the children who practiced their English on us. One was a history and English teacher and they all invited us to join them at 3pm for the big celebrations and to eat goat with them, this was so tempting and we nearly changed our plans. How lovely was that but we couldn't as we were moving on. We gave them one of our Australian flags and they screamed with excitement. Said our goodbyes and set off further into The Picos de Europa mountains-magnificent. Got held up for a while by cows on the road that had no farmer with them only a dog! Was he helping the farmer? Or helping the cows to escape? Had a quick photo stop and felt we were looking across Dartmoor didn't think the drive would get any better then went through a tiny tunnel(thankfully nothing was coming the other way as we had to drive in the centre because of the overhang) that was carved through a mountain and came out into the most spectacular views-we were very high up- unbelievable! Gave some water to a cyclist who was on his way back from a 120km ride through the mountains! And he reckons he wasn't fit! Jess sat up the front for some of today. After fuelling up we took the road from Canga de Onis to Covadonga which climbed steeper and steeper until a magnificent Cathedral appeared before us. Another dilemma - do we drive right to the top? And risk not being able to turn around or park? Well we made it and parked up and saved ourselves a very big walk. Again it was a Fiesta day and lots were dressed in National dress but we had missed the early celebrations. Visited the cathedral and a spectacular open air church built into the rock face. Then decided to take the extremely steep road further up to the summit of the mountain hoping to park up for the night in a car park as we have done previously. Well! What a road! Very windy very steep very narrow and very worrying for Jo!!!! All car parks had signs for no overnight parking so turned back and stopped at a view point and after taking some photos we caught the bottom of Priscilla's rear corner bumper on the ridiculously steep exit! Had to stop and make some running repairs before heading back down the mountain. Disappointing that this happened but nothing could take away the spectacular drive today. As Words and pictures cannot describe what we saw and experienced. Ended the day at a lovely campsite at the bottom of the mountain Camping Covadonga. While I cooked David & Jess walked through the village which we will explore more tomorrow in the daylight.
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