Asturias – walking in the Somiedo National Park

Having spent an afternoon in the major city in Asturias, Oviedo, we jumped on the bus to Pola de Somiedo for a couple of days of walking.

Having never visited Asturias before I was amazed at how big and beautiful the landscape is and I certainly would recommend Somiedo to everyone. Its quiet and being a national park it is never going to be over developed like some of the towns in the Picos Mountain area.

Its really easy to get maps from the tourist information office in the centre of the village but you do need to book a taxi to get to the start of the walks, there is only one in the village and he gets very busy. It went against my better judgement to set off on a huge walk with just a leaflet, but the whole area is really well sign posted so its easy to navigate. Having being unable to get a proper map, and having walked in the Alps before I knew a leaflet would do.

Ruta de los Lagos de Saliencia – 23.5 km

Make sure the taxi drives through the village of Valle del Lago and drops you at the start of the path to the Lago del Valle (the lake). Follow this path to were it splits and the signs point to the Ruta de Siliencia which starts to head up the hillside. From here the path is way marked by a white and yellow striped symbol on rocks, make sure you follow these. The map we had confusingly suggested that we needed to zig zag up the hillside, but we trusted the way markers more than the map so we headed along the track a bit further. Eventually we reached another signpost half way up the mountain path.

We would eventually walk back here to head across to Lago del Valle, but for now we continued up the mountain pass to Lagos de Saliencia.

A map would have usefully told us how far we would have to walk, as in the 35 degree heat it eventually took us 2 and a half hours to reach the lakes from this point. On the way to the top of the pass there is a water trough with a spring near the top which is useful for filling up bottles. From there, the path heads steadily downhill towards the lakes.

Compared to the Lago del Valle route which is more popular along the valley bottom, the route to Siliencia is very quiet and once your over the mountain pass it feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere.

When you get to the final high point, you need to cut off the main track to the right over a little rocky path to see the most beautiful lake of the 4 in the area – lake Calabazosa. A great spot for a late lunch, since from here you need to head back.

After lunch we headed back to the top of the pass, filled up our water at the spring, and headed back to the sign. From here we decided to carry on to do the Lago del Valle walk too, so from the sign we continued on – contouring around the mountainside. The path here is narrow and obviously less well walked but otherwise easy to follow.

We were glad to have made the effort to walk to the Lakes of Saliencia as Lago del Valle is big but dammed and with a wide track to its edge it feels a lot less remote. We walked across the dam and headed down the far side through the woodlands.

The path through the woods eventually becomes a track but is a great spot to see the branas, old sheperd huts which have been preserved. It was also great to finally be out of the sunshine.

The whole walk took us 9 hours and 20 minutes but we did have a long lunch and paddle in the lake.

Related articles

• El viaje a Asturias (The trip to Asturias) (macsenespana.wordpress.com)
• http://www.topwalks.net/en/somiedo/valle_saliencia.htm – a great website with walk maps and detailed descriptions