CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Northern Spain: gorge road through the Desfiladero de los Beyos. A one-way ride of 180 km, Posada de Valdeón to Amieva - roughly 3 h 21 in the saddle. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 8 km this is Picos de Europa Loop, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Here the high wall of the Picos de Europa closes the Liébana valley like a stage curtain. Around Fuente Dé, the road from Potes simply runs out against a cliff, an amphitheatre of grey limestone that rises some eight hundred metres almost straight up. A cable car, the Teleférico de Fuente Dé, climbs that face in a few minutes to the upper station at around 1,800 metres, and from the top you walk out onto a moonscape of karst, scree and old mine workings, with the peaks of the Central Massif all around. On a clear day it is one of the great views of northern Spain. On a cloudy one, you rise through grey fog and step out above a sea of cloud.
Read the complete Near Posada de Valdeón write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Picos de Europa point 1 sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Picos de Europa point 2.
Caín is the end of the road in the most literal sense: a handful of stone houses at the bottom of the Valdeón valley where the Cares river disappears into one of the deepest gorges in Europe. From here, the famous Ruta del Cares, a footpath cut into the cliff, runs about twelve kilometres downstream to Poncebos in Asturias, hacked out of the rock in the twentieth century to maintain a water channel for a hydroelectric plant. The path clings to the gorge walls with drops of hundreds of metres, passing through tunnels and over narrow bridges, and walking even an hour of it from Caín is worth every step.
Read the complete Near Posada de Valdeón write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Picos de Europa point 2 comes up 95 km in. Next is Picos de Europa point 3.
The western massif of the Picos de Europa, the Cornión, rises in a wall of grey limestone above the green valleys of eastern Asturias, and the country around Amieva, Cangas de Onís and Covadonga is where the mountains first take hold. It is a land of deep gorges, steep meadows, stone villages and fast rivers, with cows and goats on the slopes and the peaks often lost in cloud.
Read the complete Near Amieva write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
180 km in you reach Picos de Europa point 3.