Hiking in the Natural Parks of Asturias

 Walking? Hiking? When does a walk become a hike, or vice versa? I dunno. I suppose that for me, if I change into hiking boots or think about changing into hiking boots in order to go for a walk, it's a hike. Anyway we did both walking and hiking in Spain, everything from easy strolls along to steep trails in the mountains. In a month many of these routes will be busy or at least not empty, but in May and early June we pretty much had them to ourselves. 

In Somiedo Natural Park

Also Somiedo. That's Juliet off in the distance.

In the hills above the heavily touristed but pretty town of Potes.

Somiedo Natural Park. Really cool geology. Also, if you click to see the bigger photo you can see several traditional-style thatch-roof huts. 

Here's a close-up of some of the huts. Now used just for sheltering animals.

Of course there were also lovely rivers, creeks, bridges, etc.

Brigitte and Juliet did a walk along the coast. Loved it. 

It's a great area and a great time of year for birdwatching: lots of birds migrate up from Africa to breed, so the forests and fields are constantly loud with birdsong from both resident birds and migrants.

Here's a wagtail wagging its tail at us. 

We didn't get photos of the mama bear with cubs that we saw at Somiedo Natural Park -- they were much too far away -- nor the 'rebecos' (French word is chamois; they are antelope-like animals that live at high elevation).  The only time we saw a lot of people in one place at Somiedo was when we came upon a big group looking for bears. It turns out this was a meeting of nature guides from all of the parks in the region: at the end of the day, after the meeting was over, they all came out to see what they could see.

Anyway we got no photos of the charismatic megafauna. But here's a nice green lizard.

Even the tiniest towns have their own church.  Many of them are not used much (I'm sure some aren't used at all), and I would guess that eventually a lot of them will be torn down or converted to other uses or something. But for now they add a focal point to every little village.

This was definitely the right time for wildflowers, which were all over the meadows and along the roadsides in great profusion.

Spring wildflowers were everywhere.

Where there are flowers there are pollinators. We saw many bumblebees of different sizes and color patterns, and many butterflies.