A wild corner of Europe

Never trust a man in hiking shorts and carrying a big stick, especially one you found on the internet. Mine was a nameless chap whose online mission was to guide others to the fabulous day treks in Cantabria’s Liébana Valley, which abuts the Picos de Europa national park in northern Spain.

It is still a relatively little-visited area and guidebooks in English seem scarce, hence my online search for advice. Armed with printouts of my anonymous guide’s best routes, I had set out into the peaks only to discover that his notion of a “moderate” eight-hour outing turned out to be my notion of a weekend break requiring an overnight stay. But once his timings had been adjusted for relative fitness levels, the Liébana proved to be one of Spain’s great walking regions, with astounding views over the jagged limestone crags and peaks of the Picos, dropping down to ancient forest and alpine meadows. September is a wonderful time for walking here: still sunny but not brutally so, and the whole region is awash in shifting colours.

The Picos de Europa national park covers about 250 square miles and the provinces of Cantabria, Asturias and Castilla y León all claim a share. The Liébana Valley lies snug against its south-east corner and most lodgings are a world away from the clumps of Alhambra-u-like holiday villas that splatter swathes of Andalusia far to the south. Were the planners of the world ever to announce a competition for most sympathetic mass conversion of barns and/or assorted outbuildings, the Liébana and the Picos de Europa could probably fight off all comers.

Even so, the Liébana does have something in common with its Mediterranean compatriot: in an often wet and somewhat cooler region of Spain, the valley has a decidedly southern microclimate – it is protected by mountains that trap much (but not all) of the rain. This gives generally bright, even hot, summers.

I’ve stayed in, or near, the Picos de Europa many times over the past 20 years. But somehow I hadn’t really registered the Liébana Valley until recently. Now I don’t know how I missed it. It gives such a thrilling perspective on the Picos: as the light shifts across the massifs that rip the skyline, the rock glows pink, white, sometimes an ice blue. There are paths and ancient thoroughfares – some Roman and others pre-Roman – everywhere, dipping down past fertile hay meadows, jumping over freezing streams, wiggling through forests of chestnut, cork and ash.

On my most recent trip the hire car spent days at a time parked up in the hamlet of Bárago, in which I had rented a cottage. The place looked like nothing was happening but between the haymaking and the health-and-safety-defying restoration of the village church, it was all go. The same group on their way to the meadows passed us lolling in the garden of the cottage every morning; unfortunately, timing had it that as they came home at dusk we always seemed to be planted in the same spot, looking as though we’d barely moved.

In fact, quite often, by that point, we could barely move. The walks from the front door are so packed with detail, colour and texture that it is all too often tempting to just keep going. There are full-blooded hikes into the Picos foothills; meandering lanes through tiny villages of few houses and many dogs; small, perilously clinging fields that must be tended by hand; tracks through silent, creaking woods. On one walk, we came across a pen of vicious-looking hunting dogs, and feared for the highly protected Cantabrian brown bears (oso pardo) that are being reintroduced here.

The bears share their habitat with wild boar, which are highly prized by hunters, though the local hunting federation has signed up to a pact not to harm the bears. The bear population is still tiny and hard to monitor but the Fundación Oso Pardo estimates that there are about 190 in the Cantabrian mountain range as a whole. There have been sightings in the Liébana Valley – one of them by us, earlier this year.

We were lucky to see that bear in the few seconds it took for it to make itself scarce. But nearly as rare on our walks were other people. The Liébana is not a crowded place, so don’t expect to practise your Spanish at every turn. For that, you head into Potes, whose Monday market is reputed to be the oldest in Spain. There is an excellent butcher and delicatessen selling regional specialities, including a somewhat palate-searing blue cheese, some exceptional clover honeys and cecina, an air-cured beef that formed the basis of most of our picnics.

Some of the butchers and restaurants in Liébana urge you to order locally raised meat on the grounds that you will be helping to conserve the rare bearded vulture that feeds off the feebler – well, dead – members of the flock or herd. These huge vultures, whose wingspans exceed three metres, are also known as bone-crushers, for their habit of breaking up bones too large to swallow by dashing them on to rocks from a great height.

We played our part in these conservation efforts with our trips into Potes to dine at the Asador Llorente, a first-class restaurant. The menu includes perfectly baked suckling pig and 1kg T-bone ox steak (and not always to share, from what I could see).

Otherwise we ate at Mesón La Vega, a few kilometres down the hill from our house. This bar with dining room attached serves a really good fixed price menu del día at less than €10 for three courses including wine. On Sundays it is noisily full – why cook at those prices? At one table a priest enjoyed his post-mass wine with his pals; at another, small children fell asleep with their heads on the table.

A half-hour or so on from Potes into Liébana heartland is the Fuente Dé cable car, lifting 750m to leave you 1,850m above sea level. This ratchets up the drama of the Picos several notches into proper mountain terrain – it’s certainly wild up there – but the trip is such a draw, especially in the main Spanish holiday month of August, that this is one of the area’s few overcrowded places. Unless you book in advance or arrive before its 10am opening time, you will queue.

I’ve jostled for those incredible views from the teleférico’s vantage point as much as the next person but to me the Liébana is all about the quiet surprises of an amble straight from the front door – even if one of them might be a startled brown bear.

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Details

Madrid-based agency Rustical Travel (www.rusticaltravel.com) has cottages to rent in Liébana from €390 ($562) per week. The nearest airports are Santander, Bilbao or Asturias. Asador Llorente, c/San Roque, Potes, tel: +34 94 273 8165 (no website).

Mesón La Vega, La Vega, Vega de Liébana: www.mesonlavega.com.

For general visitor information see www.liebanaypicosdeeuropa.com