After a crystal clear night in the mountains the chill of the peaks had collected morning fog in the valley, soon to be burnt away by the sun. We had everything packed and got us a T-shirt with a wildlife-bear of the Picos de Europa as a souvenir. Usually we never bought souvenirs because we don’t have any space left in our bike bags, but this time we happened to be a little bit nostalgic as we didn’t really feel like leaving this beautiful mountain place. The owner of the hotel Mirador de Cabrales explained us that the design of the T-shirt was his own creation.
In our conversation he told us a sad story from last week of a lethal accident which happened to a young German tourist, who got hit by a rock which loosened from the slopes due to the forest fires in the weeks before, and rolled down the mountain to hit her on the trail of the famous Ruta del Cares. The Ruta del Cares starts not far from the hotel and attracts a lot of visitors, but after the accident the trail had been closed. We were shocked by the long term effects which the fires still had to the entire ecological system including the rocks being held together by the roots of the plants. I remembered our talk with Sara and Laura of the Casa Carmina in Muros de Nalón, where they told us about their friend, a ranger in the Picos de Europa National Park, who was in tears after all the destruction of fauna and flora by the forest fires.
Now everything looked peaceful again and we felt lucky not to have been affected by the fires so far. We were ready for a wonderful long downhill ride out of the mountains back to the ocean coast. It felt like riding a motorbike with our heavy charged bicycles, because they kept rolling and rolling with their weight through steep rocky canyons and green valleys into Cantabria. We also recognized the first signs of autumn like the colouring of the leaves, and the chestnut trees losing nuts in their hedgehog-like nutshell.
At San Vicente de la Barquera we were back on ocean level. On top of a hill we enjoyed the view from the Mirador by the church of Santa Mariá de los Àngeles. The church literally lived up to its name as the most unusual statue was displayed on a gallery: a guardian angel for sailors with a rudder in his hand. I had to send a picture to my dad, who had survived a rowing accident in 12°C cold water the year before.
After such a long trip along the way of Saint James we finally had the chance to order shells and other seafood for lunch by the port, and it was delicious. Continuing along the coast we were again surprised by the great variety of landscape, nature and culture. Especially the University city of Comillas was full of exaggerated neogothic architecture like the Palaco de Sobrellano, and we saw one hidden gem of Antonio Gaudi, the Villa Quijano.
As we kept on biking out of town we saw how farmers burnt down the bushes at the limits of their fields and it felt awkward after all the forest fires we had witnessed on our trip. Arriving in Santillana del Mar we found a room in the Hotel de Altamira, a medieval place which had so many up and down stairs that it felt like the built sculpture of the Dutch artist M.C. Escher. We could park our bikes in the lobby underneath very old paintings.
Robert was ready for a nap, but I wanted to continue because I was so ambitious to burn another 25km to add to my tachometer to be able to achieve 4.000km on the next day when we would reach Santander. With the sunset suddenly the weather changed and low clouds moved in. It got really chilly and I had nothing but a T-Shirt on me. It even started to drizzle a little bit and I had to keep myself warm with just burning more calories. The first time I had cold since we had left the Alps more than two months ago. I returned to our hotel in the dark and we enjoyed a wonderful dinner at the restaurant La Viga with its funny wallpaper full of bikers.
