Fuente Dé is the end of the road, in the best sense. The CA-185 climbs up a narrow glacial valley from Potes, the little capital of the Liébana region, and finishes in a vast amphitheatre of limestone, a cirque of grey cliffs that rise nearly vertically above the meadow and block off the sky. There is nowhere further to ride, so you park, tip your head back, and look up.
What makes the place famous is the cable car. It carries visitors from the valley floor at about a thousand metres to a viewing platform on the cliff edge at around eighteen hundred, a rise of roughly seven hundred and fifty metres in a few minutes, and from the top you can see the central massif of the Picos de Europa, a landscape of peaks, snowfields and deep gorges. Queues build up on summer weekends, and the cable car closes in bad weather or for maintenance, so check ahead if the ride up is the point.
The Picos are the first mountains in Spain to be protected as a national park, and the range supports chamois, golden eagles, griffon vultures and a few Cantabrian brown bears that roam the forests lower down. Fuente Dé itself has a small cluster of buildings, a few restaurants and a shop, and the meadow is full of cattle bells in summer. The light is superb in the late afternoon, when the cliffs turn amber and the shadows fill the valley.
The ride up from Potes follows the Deva river, with a mix of straights and long, flowing bends, and views of the cliffs opening ahead. The surface is generally good, but the road is narrow in places and the weekend traffic of coaches and campervans can be slow. The mountain weather changes quickly: you can arrive in sun and be in cloud within twenty minutes, and the temperature at the base is always cooler than in Potes.
Potes is also the place for local food, with a hearty bean-and-cabbage stew called cocido lebaniego and the strong local fruit spirit orujo, and the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, a short drive from the town, claims the largest surviving fragment of the True Cross.