francis

Good Friday hike up to Pico Polio. On a clear day you can see Picos, Las Ubiñas, Peña Rueda, San Isidro, Peña Mea, Peña Mayor, El Sueve y la costa (Gijon). It was a little hazy towards the coast, but otherwize you could see far away during the hike. We were lucky with a light breeze. We will return to Valle del Turón for sure. Must be nice in winter as well. The only unfortunate thing was that we missed visiting bar/restaurant El Rancho to have a couple of siders. It is not too far away from Area Recreativa Rozamayor.

Hike through forested areas on mostly prepared routes, some degraded because of traffic associated with forest management and/or livestock. Although we had good weather, the sky was a bit hazy, and this limited how far we could see. On a clear day, the views can be expected to be great (Gijón, Llanera, Siero, Sariego, Oviedo, Sierra del Aramo, Peña Mayor, Picos de Europa, Sierra del Sueve). I had planned to walk this route https://www.komoot.com/tour/2804943439?ref=itd, but, on the walk itself went for a slight variation. What I thought was going to be a short extension, resulted in having to traverse a completely overgrown track. I have since updated OSM to reflect this. I believe this used to be a forest road. Other than that, we had good weather. On the way back, we stopped in Pola de Siero for some well deserved refreshments. We will likely go back to this area. I found a track on wikiloc (https://es.wikiloc.com/rutas-senderismo/picu-fariu-picu-gavio-y-pena-de-los-cuatro-jueces-sariego-siero-gijon-villaviciosa-79904931) that has quite a bit of overlap with the one I did.

Weekend trip to Guipúzcoa with friends. Had a great time. Stayed in Bermeo on Friday and visited San Sebastian on Saturday. Easily the most beautiful city in Spain.

After a couple of days and rain and cold, the results could be seen once some good weather rolled in. Snow in the mountains and small streams turning into big ones. We had good fun, the weather was great and the company fantastic. Get out there!

Great hike with very nice weather; sunny and not too warm. We were met by two dogs on the hike. The black one (calling him Villayu) accompanied us the whole hike. The big one (Mastina) joined us on the way down back to Villayu. I believe both have there home in the village. Tried two "off-piste" tracks. I dont think I will add them in OSM as one of them is already severely degraded by MTB downhill. Forrest ground just erodes extremely easily. I will try another one I found on my next hike.

Spring like weather on this hike. The Mimosa trees I saw last week were now in full bloom. You could hear the bees buzzing around everywhere around the trees. We had some low level light clouds that made some of the photos less clear than I would have liked. Otherwise a great hike. On the way back the skies were clear enough to do some star gazing. A great app that helps with that is Stellarium. I am hoping the cold will come back, I am still in winter mode.

Friday was a day with so much rain that I planned my weekly hike for Saturday. Beautiful sunny day. I walked a near similar route a couple of weeks ago, but, this time nearly all of it happened with daylight. Some spring was in the air, you could see that in between the Eucalypt and Pines, some of the Mimosa trees were starting to flower. They look magnificent up close. Normally they have a very intense smell, but, I couldnt really smell anything. Some Bumble Bees were flying around already, I am sure that they did smell. I came across a bit of track where someone hung part of the drive train of his bike :-). It was easy to see where that might have happened. This hike is a nice recovery hike, nothing too extraneous.

We started our hike in La Caizuela this time. Although it is just north of where we normally start, but to get there by car takes substantially longer. A detour to see the Pico Freira waterfalls was included. Although this didnt take much time, this, the extra time travelling to La Caizuela, and the hike back to a lot longer than we expected. So in the end, a big part of the hike was done in darkness. Although the initial descend from Pico Miliquitanes back to La Caizuela was fine, long stretches were very muddy. This is a common track for cows as well, and with all the rain that had fallen, difficult to walk on. We came back to La Caizuela unusually tired, so we had a stop at La Tenada before driving back home.

Nice new variation of the Northwestern part of the area around Gorfolí. The weather did end up closing in on us. The last few kms were against the wind, and we got quite wet. Great hike though!

Nice new hike in an area just West of where I normally go. Sundown at 18:20, dark 19:00. You could notice the snow in the mountains with the wind that was blowing. Yesterday we had a bit of a storm, and many smaller branches had come down. I will explore how I can connect this hike to getting to the windmills.