Candamo

The cave guide flicks off his torch and the bison appear. Not sketched in charcoal like cave-school art, but brushed in ochre fat fifteen millennia ago, the ribcage shading still graded like a Renaissance study. There are only fourteen visitors allowed in La Peña de Candamo at once; you will probably be the only British passport in the group, and the silence feels almost rude. Then someone’s phone buzzes, the spell breaks, and you’re herded back into daylight where a tractor is reversing outside the stone hut opposite. That collision of time-scales is Candamo in miniature: world-class prehistory on a cattle-grid timetable.

Buses, Boots and B-roads

Candamo isn’t a single village; it’s a federation of hamlets strung along the upper Nalón valley, 25 minutes’ drive south of Avilés. The council hands out maps that look reassuringly detailed until you notice contour lines stacked like pressed flowers. Roads twist, lorries full of silage take priority, and the 50 km/h sign is aspirational. If you arrive by public transport you’ll get as far as San Román, look around, and wonder where everybody is. Answer: scattered. A car, or at least a willingness to walk the farm tracks linking La Fresneda, Sariego and La Peral, is essential.

Distances mislead. The mirador above the gorge is only six kilometres from the A-8 motorway, yet the lane narrows to a single car’s width bordered by chestnut trees that scratch both wing mirrors. Meeting a milk tanker here is a test of reverse nerves and clutch-smell. Allow double the GPS estimate and you’ll still arrive early.

What the Ice Age Left Out

The cave ticket (€8, reserve online) buys 45 minutes and strict photochemistry: no bags, no perfume, no touching the temperature-controlled handrail. Interpretation is in Spanish, but handouts explain that the artists used local iron oxide mixed with marrow fat and applied it with their fingers rather than brushes. The guide demonstrates by smearing a line of imaginary paint across his palm; when he opens his fist the ochre is still there, a reminder that some pigments outlast bone.

Outside, the valley feels curated by cows. Hay meadows are trimmed to croquet-lawn height, stone walls stitched with moss. Traditional granaries (hórreos) stand on stilts like upturned boats, many still loaded with last year’s chestnuts rather than camera lenses. You can follow a way-marked loop through San Román in twenty minutes, but it’s worth dawdling to read the cemetery: sea-captains from Havana, miners from Pennsylvania, a child who “returned from Brighton 1923”. Candamo exported people for a century; now the traffic is reversed, with weekenders from Oviedo buying stone barns they’ll never quite finish restoring.

Food Meant for Field Workers

Lunch options are limited to two bars and a weekend restaurant, all within 200 m of the cave car park. Order the fabada half-ration and you’ll still receive a soup bowl of butter beans, morcilla and pancetta thick enough to support a spoon upright. The local alternative is pote de berces, a kale-and-potato broth that tastes like a Welsh winter cawl with added chorizo fat. Drinkable cider costs €2.80 a bottle, but waiters only pour a culín splash at a time; leave the glass full and they assume you’re uninterested.

Strawberry season shortens June afternoons. Roadside stalls sell them in paper cones that bleed red on your palms; they’re smaller than Kent varieties, concentrated enough to make supermarket punnets taste of chilled water. Buy early – farmers pack up once the sun tops the ridge and cattle need milking.

Walking Without a Summit

Candamo’s trails don’t climb to cathedral peaks; instead they wander between meadows and pockets of sessile oak, following the wire fences that keep the rubia gallega cattle in line. The PR-AS-34 “Ruta de los Indianos” is the longest marked circuit at 12 km, rolling gently to an emigrant’s mansion now occupied by thirty goats and one suspicious donkey. After rain the clay sticks to boots like fresh concrete; gaiters are not overkill. Mid-summer brings clouds of butterflies feeding on thistle heads, but also horseflies that treat DEET as seasoning. A breeze usually rises by 11 a.m.; start early, finish at the bar before cider o’clock.

For something darker, follow the civil-war trench path above La Fresneda. Concrete bunkers built by Asturian miners lie half-swallowed by bracken; blackberry brambles have knitted the firing steps into hedgerows. Interpretation boards are rusting, yet the scene feels oddly British – a green trench system without the Somme mud. Information is scarce: bring your own Orwell.

When to Turn Up, When to Stay Away

Spring brings orchids along the verges and nights cold enough to justify the wood-burner most rural houses include in the rental price. By late May farmers are cutting silage; dust and diesel hang in the valley until dusk. September repeats the light without the pollen, plus grape harvest in the odd southern-facing plot. August is warm (24 °C max) but valley humidity can feel Kentish; combine Candamo with the coast and you’ll welcome the air-con of Gijón’s cider bars.

Winter is misty, atmospheric and closed. Cave tours shrink to weekends only, restaurants switch to “si hay gente” opening hours, and tracks turn to chocolate fondant. Book accommodation with central heating – traditional stone holds damp like a fridge.

The Honest Itinerary

If you have one hour: park at San Román, glance at the church Romanesque portal, photograph the hórreos against evening light, buy strawberries if in season, leave.

If you have half a day: book the cave, walk the 4 km San Román–La Peral loop through mill races and idle allotments, lunch on cachopo for two (you’ll manage three slices at most), drive the lane to the gorge viewpoint for a phone-signal-free half hour watching kites ride the thermals.

If you have a weekend: base yourself in a converted barn Airbnb (€90–120, dark skies, owls included), spend Saturday on the Indianos trail, Sunday driving the back lanes to La Fresneda’s bunker hill, finish with cheese-buying at Quesería La Peral – the factory shop sells mild 35-day wheels that survive RyanAir hand luggage if padded by socks.

Candamo will never dominate a bucket list. It offers instead the slower pleasure of a place still calibrated to livestock and daylight, where you measure the day by cider pours rather than Instagram likes. Turn up expecting grand gestures and you’ll leave early; arrive prepared to idle, and the valley starts marking time in your own pulse.