Saturday (21st Sep) we headed off to Rinlo railway station to catch the Ferrol to Oviedo train. Today the train arrived, didn’t catch fire and even took us to our final destination of Luarca but was a typical 40 minutes late.
We had a nice lunch (menu of the day) at Hotel Baltico with the highlights being our starter dishes – Moe had Shellfish Paella and I had the Scorpion fish pate.
The town and port of Luarca had a working feel to it. After our long lunch, we wandered around the harbour before catching our train back to Rinlo.
Two quiet days followed and we took care of laundry and packed up ready for a short journey along the coast. We did manage a sneaky tapas lunch at Bar Portillo on Monday.
On our walk, we passed two “Cetareas” on our way into Rinlo.These are ancient shellfish breeding grounds.
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The next morning we said “Adios” to Belen at Camping Rinlo Costa and received a few good tips of places to visit on the final few weeks of our travels. Camping Rinlo Costa was so peaceful, everyone was very friendly and we were sorry to say goodbye to the relative luxury of our pink bungalow.
Moe has declared that her wrists are sufficiently healed to revert back to sleeping in our campervan, Nellie.
Just an hour or so later, around lunchtime on Tuesday, we have arrived at Camping L’Amuravela on the outskirts of Cudillero. We were given a choice of pitches and faffed around until we found a great corner spot which was level and easy to get off given the pitches were wet and further rain was in the forecast.
Most of the pitches were back-to-back pairs and some were a grouping of four. Motorhomes, from a certain country, annexed the entire double pitch or in the case of the quad pitches, the entire area! Need i say more…
The campsite is located 2 or 3 kilometres from the port but the walk back is absolutely brutal. The town is located at the bottom of a very steep valley and today, its main economic activity is tourism but it retains a strong fishing culture.
Legend has it that the town was founded by the Vikings and in addition to Castillian, the locals speak a dialect known as Pixueto. It is renowned as one of the prettiest villages in Spain.
By the time we made had walked down to the harbour, our legs were shaking and not looking forward to the hike back. There are a number of marked trails around the port and surrounding hills with spectaculour views.
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Trips and days out are taking place with increased frequency and it’s getting harder to remember just what we did and where we’ve been.
This was our first and only full day in Cudillero and we woke up to a damp start and Moe chose for us to have a day out in Aviles. We caught the train at El Pito Pinera which is about a mile walk from the campsite. The trains are still narrow gauge from Cudillera (in fact all the way along the coast to the border with France) but from here they are electrified and our outward and return journeys were on time.
Aviles is a large town / city with a nice pretty old-town centred around the Plaza d’Espana. We wandered around the streets taking in the scenery.
Here at Aviles railway station, old meets new. You can see in the picture below the different gauge railways.
A very wet night and we made the decision to move on tomorrow morning and head for the mountains.