Pilgrims have been trudging past these walls for about a thousand years, which makes a motorcycle look like a rather recent idea. The monastery of San Salvador de Cornellana stands beside the Narcea river in central Asturias, on the old inland route to Santiago that runs west from Oviedo through Grado and Salas. It was founded in the eleventh century, passed to the Benedictines of Cluny, and the church that survives keeps Romanesque bones under later remodelling. The bulk of the cloister and the old monastic buildings give the little village a weight that seems out of proportion to its size.
This is the Camino Primitivo, the oldest of the pilgrim ways, said to follow the path taken by King Alfonso II of Asturias to the newly found tomb of St James in the ninth century. You will see the walkers, scallop shells swinging from their packs, and they will see you, so ride through the village gently. Asturias treats them well: there are hostels and cafés in every town and the locals are used to strangers asking for directions in four languages.
The Narcea is a famous salmon river, and the valley around Cornellana is the green, damp Spain that surprises people expecting sunshine. Chestnut and oak cover the slopes, cows graze between stone barns on stilts called hórreos, and cloud often sits low on the hills in the morning. The roads are a joy if you like your corners linked and endless: the old road west toward Salas climbs through wooded hills with smooth curves and modest traffic, since most through traffic now uses the motorway. Rain is a fact of life here at any season, and wet leaves in autumn deserve respect.
Grado, seven kilometres away, has fuel, a weekly market and plenty of places to eat; Salas, a little further west, has a medieval tower and the tomb of Fernando de Valdés, the sixteenth-century Inquisitor General who was born there. Asturian food deserves the stop: fabada with its creamy white beans and smoked meats, local cheeses, and cider poured from a great height by a waiter who has practised it for years. The cider is low in alcohol, but still not for riders. A café con leche and a slice of something sweet will do just as well before you carry on west.