Corvera de Asturias

The taxi driver from Asturias Airport eyes the address and shrugs. "Corvera? That's just houses and roundabouts." Six kilometres later, the dual carriageway dissolves into narrow lanes where stone granaries perch beside modern garages, and the smell of cut grass drifts through the window. He wasn't entirely wrong—this isn't the Asturias of travel posters—but that's precisely what makes it worth slowing down for.

Corvera sits five minutes inland from the Cantabrian coast, close enough to catch Atlantic weather yet sheltered from salt winds. Green meadows roll gently rather than plunging dramatically; the municipality's highest point barely tops 250 metres. What looks flat on Google Earth is actually a quilt of shallow valleys stitched together by parish boundaries that predate the motorway. The A-8 skirts the southern edge, funnelling freight to Avilés and weekenders to the beach, while the old parish roads meander between cow sheds and new-build estates with equal nonchalance.

Parish Hopping Instead of Monument Dodging

Forget ticking off a single historic centre. Corvera is spread across fifteen parishes, each with its own chapel, football pitch and summer fiesta. The council headquarters occupies a 1970s block opposite a petrol station; the nearest thing to a main square is the car park outside Alimerka supermarket. Guidebooks hate this kind of layout—there's nowhere to plant a selfie stick—but it rewards anyone willing to drive (or cycle) slowly from one nucleus to the next.

Start at Trasona, where the fourteenth-century church of San Juan stands beside the reservoir path. Morning mist often lifts off the water, revealing herons on the far bank and joggers trying to keep their trainers dry. Walk twenty minutes along the track and you'll pass more horreos—raised grain stores on stone stilts—than souvenir shops in all of Oviedo. Some are immaculate, painted the same custard-yellow as their owner's house; others sag like retired donkeys, their slate roofs patched with corrugated iron. Dates carved into the wood often read 1783 or 1837, but nobody treats them as museum pieces; the one behind the primary school still holds garden tools and a plastic sledge.

Carry on to Nubledo and the pattern repeats: chapel, bar, cluster of houses, meadows falling away towards the N-632. The bar opens at seven for coffee and brandy, closes at three, reopens at six for the football. Inside, a handwritten sign lists the menu: "Callos, Fabada, Arroz con leche. Todo casero." English isn't spoken, but pointing works. A plate of tripe stew and a bottle of cider sets you back €11—half the price of the harbour-front restaurants in nearby Avilés.

Motorway Groceries and Meadow Banking

Practicalities are refreshingly straightforward. The Las Vegas commercial strip—yes, really—hosts a Lidl, Aldi and the regional Alimerka chain, all with spacious car parks that make British visitors sigh with relief after squeezing into medieval city bays. Fuel is cheaper here than in Gijón, and the cash machines actually work on Sunday. Top up before you head into the lanes; the only other ATM is inside a bar whose opening hours depend on the owner's grandchildren.

Public transport exists on paper. A twice-daily bus trundles to Avilés market, another to the hospital, but the last return leaves at 20:40. Miss it and a taxi costs €18. Hire cars start at £28 a day from the airport desk; accept the diesel, you'll cover more miles than expected. Roads are well-surfaced but narrow—expect to reverse into a gateway when the milk lorry appears. Sat-nav occasionally loses its nerve and suggests uturns across freshly mown hay; ignore it and keep going, every lane eventually meets a signpost.

When to Come, What to Eat, Where to Sleep

Spring brings buttercups up to the bumper and weather that can't decide between T-shirt and anorak. By late June the meadows are baled into plastic-wrapped cylinders that look like giant marshmallows. July and August trigger parish fiestas: foam parties in the car park, brass bands tuning up next to the cider stall, children still chasing footballs at two in the morning. September is quieter, the grass regrows, and locals finally get a parking space outside their own houses. Winter rarely sees snow this low; instead, horizontal rain sweeps across the junctions and the reservoir path turns into chocolate mousse.

Accommodation splits into two camps: business hotels aimed at airport passengers and rural houses rented by families visiting cousins. The Mirador del Angliru belongs to the first group—clean, modern, free Wi-Fi, but the promised "mountain view" is a gentle hillock and the Angliru climb itself is 40 km away. Prices hover around €65 bed-and-breakfast, cheaper at weekends when the suits disappear. Self-catering cottages start at £90 a night; most sit in former farmyards where roosters provide the dawn chorus and the nearest bar is a ten-minute walk along an unlit lane. Bring a torch.

Eating options reflect the commuter-and-cousin mix. Casa Pacho beside the roundabout serves half a roast chicken, chips and a fried egg for €9.50; the laminated menu includes photos for the linguistically terrified. Pizzería El Hornón offers wood-fired dough and will swap tuna for pepperoni without debate. For something more Asturian, Vallehermoso pours cider with theatrical altitude and plates grilled pork shoulder that could feed two. Vegetarians get tortilla, salad, and sympathetic shrugs—this is still Spain.

The Honest Verdict

Corvera will never feature on a "Top Ten" list. There's no medieval bridge, no cliff-top hermitage, no Instagram-ready fishing fleet. What it does offer is a chance to watch ordinary Asturian life tick along between motorway and meadow. One moment you're behind a tractor loaded with silage, the next you're overtaking a Bentley heading for the airport Hilton. Kids kick balls against seventeenth-century stone, while their parents WhatsApp photos of the new bypass extension. It's messy, lived-in, and entirely comfortable with its lack of postcard perfection.

Come if you're curious about how modern Spain grafts onto the old rural skeleton. Stay a couple of nights, walk the reservoir at dawn, drive the lanes at cow-speed, drink cider in a bar that still closes for the owner's siesta. Leave the selfie stick in the glovebox and bring sensible shoes—mud happens. You won't leave with a fridge magnet, but you might just understand why half of Asturias refuses to move to the city, even when the roar of the A-8 is never entirely out of earshot.