22km, 1100m ascent 1200m descent.

We had breakfast in the cafe Venezia in Infiesto and looked at the weather forecast. Rain and cloud for the next few days. Julio said that this stage would have had the best views and with the cloud level at about 300m we decided to postpone the walk for a couple of days so we took the FEVE back to Oviedo...

...We arrieved back in Espinaredo at about 8am on Sunday and set off. There was still cloud and a bit of rain but the forecast was reasonable so we paused under hórreos and the eaves of cabañas as we slowly weaved up the hillside, hoping to arrive at the top after the cloud had left.

The rain in summer means that the plant life is, shall we say, vigorous. While we were walking up wide tracks it was no problem but as the tracks got narrower we had to fight our way through a bit more.

The hills here are a bit steep, and you can see tracks (often animal tracks) that seem close, and think oh, it's not far, and then you have to contour around and it's actually quite a way. I was in front and got soaked, threading through big ferns and trees that had grown over the path. It had stopped raining but each bush had a big charge of water waiting to dump on me if I forgot to give it a good whack with my pole.

Julio walks with a wooden bastón, it's a walking stick with a solid steel ferrule on the end. Handy for whacking at gorse and bracken and plants with spines. He's had it ten years or more but when he tried the two pole style he seemed taken with that.

We threaded our way through the peaks, maintaining our altitude until we reached the coll we were heading for where we had a break and Julio pointed out our next stretch.

It was a descent but without a path, which had become too overgrown to pass. As we descended we were faced with ferns and bracken and gorse, and in the places we could pass there was a ton of mud. We got down to the cabaña we were heading for (the one with a cow's skull on the side) and headed down to the river.

Which was rather higher than expected. It took a while to find somewhere to cross, Julio almost lost his stick to the river but we made it across. Of course after you cross a river you have to go up the other side, and that was quite steep too... but then, what isn't steep around here.

Lunch up at the top (at around 4pm) and a long easy way down on recently improved tracks, until we had to leave the nice wide track for our path, which was much less obvious but did take us past a massive old oak tree.

When we finished the fifth stage (of the seven stage version) Julio pointed up to a chain of peaks and said, we just have to go over that and we'll be at the albergue.

From a distance it looked smooth and green, and put me in mind of grassy english lakeland peaks.

From a distance...

Up close the Sierra de Bodes is murder in summer. The 3km ridge of peaks is covered with gorse, ferns and trees. The gorse is hidden under waist to chest-high foliage so you end up just walking through it. All three of us were reduced to yelps and squeals as our legs got more and more raw.

Then the path kept disappearing... so we had to wade into the higher, denser stuff to find it again. This all took time and we were starting to worry about the daylight.

Eventually we began descending, but still through the horrible scratchy stuff. Apparently it's much less problematic in winter. The last stage involved hacking through a little valley of the stuff that was over our heads to reach a path... which we did with a fair amount of relief and a sense that we'd been flayed


At around 10pm we reached the albergue (youth hostel) where the guys had been forewarned about our late arrival. That meant that after a shower we sat down to a big bowl of sopa de ajo (garlic soup: garlic, cayenne pepper, bread and water) followed by sausage egg and chips (or chorizo, huevo frito y patatas: either way, perfect food for a walking day) and rice pudding.

We treated ourselves to a couple of chupitos as well. We deserved something after the day's exertions.  ¶ 1:49 PM