Los Picos De Europa - September 2018

Years ago, as we sheltered from a thunderstorm in the Spanish Pyrenees, a fellow walker told us about the Picos De Europa. She said it was a paradise. So the seed was sown and last week we went – it was well worth the wait!

  

We approached the Picos from the city of Leon, where we had spent a couple of nights in an old monastery  Leon is on the Camino de Santiago pilgrim route. For me, the cathedral and pantheon were the highlights. The Gothic cathedral was built when the city had a population of only 5,000.  The ancient stained glass windows have retained their intense colours and cast an atmospheric glow over the interior.

From Leon, the Picos was a two hour scenic drive away. We stayed in comfort and luxury (very different to our normal mountain retreats) at Hotel Eigon in the village of Posada de Valdeon. The village sits in the centre of the valley hemmed in by mountains and feels very remote. On our first day we did a beautiful hike to the via ferrata – one look at the bridge suspended over a long drop, told us it wasn’t for us so we decided to save that experience for another day (or maybe never!) 

In the evening we ate at Casa Begona – a family run, inexpensive place with rustic food, eclectic decor and a very entertaining waiter.

The next day we walked the famous Cares Gorge, said to be one of the best hikes in the whole of Spain. The 22km walk (there and back) runs between Cain and Poncebos with a total ascent of 400m (100m there, 300m back).  It divides the central and western massifs, opening a pass between the high mountains. Starting from the village of Cain I wondered what all the fuss was about but as the path continued, wending its way through tunnels and limestone arches, we eventually emerged to a view of limestone crags against a cerulean sky and it was paradise. It is the combination of gorge walking and mountain walking that makes it special. 

Although the path is broad there is no protection at the edge from a drop of several hundred metres, but I have a good head for heights and never felt scared. The bad weather held off too, although we were a lot faster on our return journey as storm clouds threatened!

A long way down!

Sadly our third day in the Picos was stormy so we were forced to sample a carajillo or two and relax in the comfort of the Hotel Eigon and plan walks for our next visit!

Japan

Finally, here is my blog post on my trip to Japan, which I visited back in October 2017 (I've been busy writing my novel, which was one of the reasons I visited the country!)

Japan, efficient, clean, friendly and safe was unlike any place I had ever visited.  It wasn’t on my bucket list until I started writing a novel set there.  The more I read about it the more it fascinated me. 

We spent our first three nights in Tokyo (The Intercontinental in Tokyo Bay) adjusting to the jet lag and the culture.  We took a river trip to Asakusa, explored Ginza, visited the famous fish market where we huddled under umbrellas and munched on eel kebabs.  Then it was a two/three hour ride on the efficient bullet train to Kyoto.

Kyoto was larger than I had imagined.   And it was very much on the tourist trail.  We had found a delightful Airbnb to stay in on the outskirts of the city in a traditional Japanese home with tatami mats and shoji screens.

Our traditional room at the AirBnB

Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine

Our host, Atsuko made us feel welcome and was a font of all knowledge, telling us the best places to visit and guiding us on the workings of the bus system, which was invaluable!  If only she’d been on hand at the local laundrette where we managed to tumble dry our dirty clothes!  With her help, we were able to get off the tourist trail and discover serene temples and shrines.   We ate some of our best food in Kyoto, visited our first Sento (Japanese bath and worthy of its own blog post) and experienced our first typhoon.  In fact, it rained most of our five days there. 

Tenryu-ji

From Kyoto we were meant to take the train to Kinasaki where we had booked a night’s  accommodation to experience the public baths, but fallen trees blocked the line.Instead, we did a day trip to Nara (30 minute train ride from Kyoto).  Nara was smaller than Kyoto so it was possible to explore the major sites on foot.  It is very much on the tourist trail, but the main attraction, the Giant Buddha in the Todai-ji Temple, is so big it absorbed the crowds effortlessly.  The deer were a little overfriendly and one took a bite out of our map. 

The Giant Buddha was impressive, but the highlight for me was the lantern temple, which was atmospheric - row upon row of stone lanterns covered in moss.   

From Kyoto we took the bullet train to Hiroshima, a city with wide boulevards and hardly any high rise. The atomic dome, one of the few buildings to survive the atomic bomb, is a stark reminder of the city’s tragic history.   The Peace Memorial Museum was extremely moving and well done.  I will always remember the image of the children’s memorial surrounded by school children learning about the city’s past. 

The Atomic Dome

From Hiroshima it was a short train and ferry ride to the island of Miyajima, which is famous for its Torii gate one of the most photographed sites in Japan.  We were to stay one night on the island in a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese style hotel.  And we had chosen the right day - the sun was blazing as we walked up to the summit of Mount Misen (535 mtrs).  A cable car can get you within reach of the summit so it is a popular spot, but there weren’t many people hiking up so when we arrived at the top we felt a little smug at having got there on foot.   As night falls on Miyajima, the tourists leave and it’s possible to wander the narrow streets on your own, apart from the odd deer.  At the hotel we were given tracksuits to wear – guest even wore them to dinner!  Here we experienced our second Japanese bathing experience!

View of the Torii Gate taken from the Itsukushima Shrine

From Miyajima it was back to Hiroshima to catch the bullet train to Kobe where we experienced our second typhoon!

We arrived in Kobe on a rainy Saturday afternoon and I think the weather clouded my feeling for the place.  Thank goodness for the Oriental Hotel, with its remnants of a by-gone era, it was the best place we stayed in.  During the typhoon we visited the earthquake museum set up as a memorial to the 1995 Kobe earthquake when over 6,000 people lost their lives.   It is also there to educate and we were the only foreign visitors.  Thank goodness the sun came out on our last morning in Kobe and we were able to walk up to see the waterfalls, which were spectacular and a real asset to the city.  This meant I left with a very different opinion of Kobe to the one I arrived with. 

The culmination of our trip was Yokohama, the setting for my novel, which is inspired by a real person – my husband’s great aunt, Agnes Salvesen, who lived in Yokohama in 1913/14.  Much of Yokohama was destroyed in the 1923 earthquake so I feared there wouldn’t be much left from Agnes’ day.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover an area, called The Bluff, which still had some of the houses from 1900 and, some of them were open to the public. The house below was exactly as I had imagined the house Aggie stays in on her arrival in Yokohama.

From The Bluff we took a taxi to The Sankeien Gardens.  The gardens were built in 1906 so would have been there when Agnes visited.  It was a beautiful, serene place to wander and a fitting end to our stay in Japan.