Cangas de Onis to Aguilar de Campoo via Lagos de Covadunga (Scenes from a Christmas card)

I knew today was probably going to be a bit of a hard drive, but nothing could’ve prepared us for the amount of snow we’ve come across. Guy wanted to go up to the Lagos de Covadunga as it’s a classic Vuelta climb (cycle language!). We could see snow up there, which made him even more gleeful. We were stopped at a roundabout by a policeman who asked us to hang on while he checked by radio that there was room to park. Apparently, there’d been a heavy snowfall in the night but the road had been cleared. We started the 12km climb and I was rigid with fear for much of the way up…pretty spectacular, but scary. Coming down (it’s a dead end)was even worse as we came face to face with two motorhomes and a stream of traffic coming up. The road was only wide enough for one motorhome and there was snow piled up on either side. Thank God a knowledgeable Spanish man sorted us all out. We inched past little by little, heart in mouth, terrified of scraping our investment. Once down in the valley, we breathed a sigh of relief and Guy was a happy man ‘ cos he’d done mountains and snow. We planned to sort of skirt round the rest of the Picos mountains and come out somewhere above Burgos. What we thought was a valley road turned into mountain after mountain covered in more and more snow. It was very beautiful, but totally hair raising as we had no idea how long it would take us to get through. Along the way our road has been blocked by cows, goats and even horses .🐎 At one point, we even saw a big stag in the middle of a field of snow. We are parked in a town now. There’s still snow around but the roads are clear and it seems a bit warmer. Think Rufus will be borrowing Guy’s fleece tonight!