When my friend Michelle, with whom I traveled around Spain during my recent European trip, first suggested we should check out the Picos de Europa, I had the same response that you might be having: the Who de What?

Despite the self-aggrandizing and slightly scary name, which translates to “Spikes of Europe”, I had never heard of these mountains. Maybe you haven’t, either.

What Are the Picos de Europa?

The Picos de Europa are a mountain range along the northern coast of Spain, close to the Bay of Biscay, which apparently got their name because the “spikes” were the first sight of Europe for Spanish ships arriving from the Americas. The Picos are part of a national park but also populated by numerous small towns and traditional farming villages. The mountains are huge and made of forbidding gray limestone, often snow-capped, and surrounded by emerald-green hills dotted with herds of livestock. These green fields perpetually tinkle with the music of cowbells.

The Picos are spread over three different regions of Spain: Asturias, Cantabria, and Castilla y León. We stayed in Asturias, in a municipality called Cabrales, which has its own unique culture and cuisine (more about that later).

The Picos are known for their hiking trails and for some important Christian pilgrimage sites. There were a fair number of other tourists around when we visited, but they seemed to be mostly Spanish tourists. I’m sure the Picos de Europa get more crowded during the summer, but in April it still felt like an off-the-beaten track tourist destination.

What We Did in the Picos de Europa

1) Hiking the Ruta del Cares

Our main goal in the Picos de Europa was to do as much hiking and walking as possible. So on our first full day, we drove about 20 minutes to the village of Poncebos to walk the Ruta del Cares, the Picos’ most popular hiking trail.

The Ruta del Cares is 11 kilometers each way, carved into the rocks that wind along the Cares River gorge. We walked the full length of the trail — 22 kilometers (13.6 miles) total — and it was one of the most exhausting experiences of my life. It was insanely windy and there were many moments when I feared I would be blown off the side of the mountain. A month after the hike, my feet are still recovering from walking steeply, endlessly downhill over uneven rocks.

All that said, this hike was an experience of a lifetime and I’m so glad we did it. The scenery was dazzling, the trail itself is a feat of engineering wonder, and we made friends with a lot of charming goats.

A couple of notes about the Ruta del Cares:

1. The entire hike took us about seven hours.
2. There are no bathrooms along the 11-kilometer route and almost nowhere to even hide out of sight of you need to pee. I’m not sure what advice to offer on this point but just something to be aware of.
3. We brought our own packed lunches to eat at the halfway point, in the village of Caín, but there are also a couple of restaurants there.
4. We were really lucky to have a dry day for this hike, as it rained a lot when we were in the Picos. I would not attempt this hike in rainy weather.

2) Village walking

The weather was pretty spotty during our other two full days, and we were too tired to attempt another daylong hike anyway. So we did a couple of shorter, 6-7 kilometer hikes: one from our own village of Carreña and one from the nearby town of Arenas. We found these hikes using the AllTrails app, which I highly recommend. The downloadable AllTrails maps are excellent and we definitely would have gotten lost without them.

3) Funicular to Bulnes

Late one afternoon we caught the funicular up to Bulnes, a tiny village high in the mountains that can’t be reached by car. Before the funicular was built in 2001, Bulnes was only reachable on foot. (You can hike up to Bulnes but we didn’t have the time or energy for that. Read more about the hike in this blog post.)

Bulnes is clearly very old, although I haven’t been able to figure out exactly how old, and apparently has less than 30 inhabitants. There are one or two bars and restaurants up there, but we arrived late in the day and only had time for a quick walk around before catching the last funicular back down. (The funicular costs about €22 round trip, which seems outrageously expensive for only 14 minutes total, but it was worth it for the novelty factor.)

The main highlight of Bulnes is a short walk above the town that brings you to an excellent viewpoint for Naranjo de Bulnes — that famous spike.

4) Trip to Covadonga

Another afternoon we drove about an hour to Covadonga (I love that name), a historic and religious site in the Picos. Covadonga has several claims to fame; it’s the site of the Battle of Covadonga in the year 722, when Don Pelayo, the Visigothic king of Asturias, defeated the Arabs and kicked off the Christian reconquest of Spain (or something along these lines — I haven’t delved too deeply into the complicated religious lore of Covadonga). There is a beautiful basilica in Covadonga, dedicated to Our Lady of Covadonga, and a spectacular holy cave containing the remains of Pelayo and the next Asturian king, Alfonso I.

I highly recommend a visit to Covadonga — there are lots of hikes in the area and some beautiful gardens to wander through (assuming the weather is better than when we went). We also had lunch at a great restaurant called El Repelao that serves the best molten chocolate cake I’ve ever eaten.

5) Eating Asturian food

Speaking of lunch, the food of Asturias — and Cabrales in particular — deserves special mention in this post. Asturian food is totally unique and eating it was one of my favorite things to do in the Picos de Europa.

Let’s start with the cheese. Cabrales cheese is one of the most famous foods of Asturias, made only from the milk of sheep, goats, or cows living in the Cabrales region (where we stayed). Cabrales cheese is strong, similar to blue cheese, and is aged in the limestone caves of Cabrales. Michelle and I ate a lot of Cabrales cheese and had a hilarious experience shopping for it at “La Cueva de los Quesos” in Arenas.

Cider, or sidra, an ancient fermented apple beverage, is the official drink of Asturias. I found sidra to be an acquired taste — a bit on the acidic side — but the best part about it is the way it’s served. Sidra is meant to be splashed into a glass from high above, in small amounts, and drunk quickly while it’s still foamy. We saw it poured many different ways in different parts of northern Spain, but only in the Picos de Europa did we see these hilarious wooden cider-pourers.

My final favorite Asturian food was fabada, a hearty white bean dish made with three different types of pork. (Spaniards really love pork.)

Whew! I had more to say about the Picos de Europa than I realized. I really loved it there and definitely recommend including the Picos in your northern Spain itinerary.

Note on transport: We rented a car for our time in the Picos de Europa, which allowed us a lot of freedom and flexibility (as well as many harrowing hairpin turns on narrow mountain roads) in our itinerary. It is possible to explore the Picos by bus, especially because there are so many beautiful trails reachable on foot in every town, but it would require more organization and planning.

Stay tuned for more occasional posts about my wanderings through the Iberian Peninsula. For an overview of my entire European trip, read this post.