Picos de Europa
In July 2024, I had a few days of leave spare, so I sporadically jumped a flight to Spain and made my way to a little known hiking area, even in Spain, known as the 'Picos de Europa'. The translation is self-evident as 'the peaks of Europe'; which I thought was a little odd given it is in truth a very small region in the north of Spain near the coast and very far from the alps, where most would expect the 'peaks' to be.
Still, the 'Picos' are very striking and quite step with, as I discovered, quickly changing weather. In truth, I am ashamed to say that the mountains defeated me on the first day of the hike! More on that shortly.
I also confess in my haste, I did not plan the logistics very well. I arrived from Gatwick to Bilbao quite late at night. My plan was to immediately bus to Santander and get a connection to a charming little village called 'Potes' before another connection to 'Feunte Dé' (the main entry to the Picos).
My plans were de-railed, however, when I found out that the connection to Potes only leaves twice a day at 10:30am and 5pm and I also had to pick up some camping gas from a 'Decathalon' sports store which was on the outskirts of time (which only opened at 10am...). I made it in the end but it added a two days of travel when I found out I could have just flown to Santander direct and saved myself hassle.
Nevertheless, Bilbao is nice and it is the third time I've been over the years so it is always good to return and see the Guggenheim. My hostel, however, (again due to lack of planning) was up a massive hill :S
My plan was to hike a 150km loop in the Parque Nacional de Los Picos de Europa. The year before, I had come across a YouTuber, Harmen Hoek, who films himself hiking in silence. If you have not seen any of his videos you must, they are stunning. It's an interesting concept and discovered it is actually a thing that quite a few people do - I thought I could give it a go.. just this once as a learning project - I have been wanting to experiment with film for a little while now, for weddings and perhaps documenting holidays such as this so it was a good opportunity.
Cutting to the chase, the mountains defeated me on the first day. I was perhaps a little tardy with my progress at first. However, after I started a fairly steep and arduous climb, the weather changed to sleet and I got a little stuck.
I was following Harmen's GPX route who does give fair warning “This hike is hard!” and that the weather does tend to change in the afternoons. I was, in fact, not too far away from the summit but I reached a bedrock section which was particularly difficult to navigate. After a few attempts I was getting cold, having been saturated already from sweat and the weather, and then went a little into survival mode.
I was worried because while I had all the right gear with me if something went wrong, clothing, an inReach tracker, etc, it would be several hours before anyone arrived if I did have a tumble and my tent really did need flat ground to pitch being not freestanding. The entire climb was steep and I seriously could not remember seeing anywhere suitable to pitch.
As luck would have it, about 200 metres down from where I was there was a little perch of rocky ground with maybe a 12 degree slope - definitely worst night sleep ever as I kept sliding town towards the front of the tent - but I was able to get warm. The area did seem like it was prone to rock slides too which didn't help my anxiety.
I decided to turn back the next day and stay near the mouth of the trial instead as i only had a few days and I didn't really want to over extend myself as I had planned the week after I returned to go bike-packing in Iceland (more on that in another post - that trip also did not go as planned).
I did a timelapse on the second day. I was trying to do a 'holy grail' time lapse which is what they call a particularly difficult time lapse which goes from bright day to night. I am pleased at how well it came out actually, however, I had no idea that i would be able to see the stars so clearly - and also didn't realise that a massive floodlight from the nearby refuge would turn on at night which gave my lens a flare. Anyways on the third night, i was prepared and got some lovely shots of the galactic core, having aimed my camera the right direction this time - though it was mostly misty but there are a few shots i got where the sky was mostly clear.
Anyways, hope you have liked my little adventure. In addition to photographing my trip, I also made a little video which is linked below - apologies if the colours are slightly off, i don't do video at all (yet) and I'm colourblind - not completely but it does make matching colours accurately a little difficult.
If you do watch the video - like and subscribe and all that jazz.. I plan to make more in the future, but with my bike! Stay tuned, i'm off to Scotland next where I might give 'Silent Biking' a go.
