The Cares Gorge

There was a whirling dervish in the van this morning at 8am 🙄…cooking ‘take n bakes”, packing rucksacks, making coffee. “Come on, come on! “ …zzzz 😖- no time to gorm out of the window or even digest the muesli. Off we went to follow the 9km track to Cain, which is where the Cares Gorge starts. There were parts of the path where we decided that following the road would’ve been easier, so that was the plan for the return.

When we eventually reached the little village of Cain it was almost deserted, except for cats – scores of them everywhere! Had our lunch in the garden of a closed cafe and then set off to do the hardcore stuff. 😆

The 12km path through the gorge is basically a shelf that runs around the rocks looking down 1000 metres to the bottom in places. The path is reasonably wide so I’m reasonably happy…until it goes up or down! The route is used and maintained by the water authority to service a hydroelectric scheme – consequently, the first part of the walk is all tunnels and bridges. At about the halfway point, we think, we turned around, knowing that we had a very long walk home.

Once back at Cain, with 12 miles done already, we started the uphill walk home. After about a mile, a car passed by and the driver asked if we wanted a lift. He must’ve seen the way we were staggering uphill 😂What a lovely chap – he said it was completely normal for all the villagers to offer lifts as there’s no public transport. He spoke so fast we had no chance of understanding, but then he converted to French and somehow we had a long conversation. Can’t believe how far it was back uphill to Posada del Valdeón where we are camped..and we were expecting to walk it!!?? He dropped us off outside the village bar then proceeded to buy us a drink! Completely refused to take a penny from us, then went off home to his wife who’d rung up to see why he was late!

The phone says we’ve done 13 miles – we’ll never know if we would’ve managed the other 6!