Carey Davies gets taught some important lessons in Spain’s awesome Picos de Europa, a world of soaring limestone pinnacles, abundant wildlife and distinctive culture
“IF I ATTEMPT THAT I THINK I COULD DIE,” said my friend, looking at what lay ahead of us. It didn’t feel like an exaggeration.
The safety of the valley floor was tantalisingly close, just a hundred or so metres below, but to get there we would have to negotiate a final ordeal which at that moment looked impossible: a narrow traverse whittled out of the face of a sheer limestone cliff, with an unambiguously lethal drop below.
The ‘path’ was protected by cables, and in normal circumstances would have been no problem for either of us. But several hours ago, near the start of a long and wickedly steep descent, my friend’s knee had started hurting. We pushed on; but after a succession of plunging scree slopes, wildly exposed balcony paths and difficult downscrambles things became agonising for him, and the going had become slow, fraught and unsteady as the pain ramped up.
We had made it down to a gentle stretch of woods and pasture, and even though I remembered this final cabled section from a previous visit, my memory had tamed it somehow, made it seem less severe. We had both started to relax, thinking the worst was over. But as soon as I turned a corner and looked at this traversing trail with fresh eyes, my spirits plummeted. It was a cruel sting in the tail.
It seemed we might have to spend the night here. I looked at the steep and heavily vegetated ground around us. It didn’t seem like an attractive prospect, especially with the prospect of comfy beds so close; but we couldn’t push ahead and risk my friend losing his footing. But even after a night of ‘rest’, I wasn’t sure he would be up to the traverse tomorrow. Going back was unthinkable, but pushing ahead seemed impossible. With my stomach knotted with anxiety, I tried to weigh up the options.
DEITY’S DREAM
The Picos de Europa (Picos for short) look like something conjured in a deity’s dream:; an unreal city of sky-spearing white mountains rising from lush green skirts of forest and pasture, often wreathed in tendrils of mist and cloud, and bisected by some of the most spectacular valleys and canyons in Europe (including the jaw-dropping Cares Gorge). They shoot up from the lush temperature landscape of ‘Green Spain’ – the country’s north coast region – and are home to Iberian wolves, golden eagles and even the odd passing Cantabrian brown bear. I had made a previous visit in 2017 and memories of it remained vivid: limestone pinnacles floating above cloud inversions; secret hanging meadows f
