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about Cangas del Narcea
Land of wine and gunpowder
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The wine arrives in a juice glass, not a ceramic cider bowl. That's your first clue Cangas del Narcea isn't playing by Asturian rules. While coastal villages pour sidra with theatrical flourishes, this mountain capital 100 kilometres inland serves light, fruity reds from vineyards clinging to slopes the Romans first planted. The barman, polishing glasses at 9am, explains this in rapid Spanish—no English menu forthcoming—before sliding across a plate of chosco, the local smoked pork that tastes like Spain's answer to Arbroath smokies.
Cangas sprawls across Spain's largest municipality, a detail that becomes brutally apparent on the drive in. From Oviedo's airport, the A-63 highway throws you into the Narcea valley, then the AS-15 starts its serpentine climb through hamlets where stone houses huddle against Atlantic weather. Google Maps lies shamelessly here: what appears a 90-minute journey stretches towards two hours as hairpin bends force fourth-gear descents past chestnut forests turning copper in October's damp air.
The town itself sits at 400 metres, high enough for weather that changes faster than British conversation. Morning mist rolls off the surrounding peaks—the Cordillera Cantábrica rising to 2,000 metres—then burns away to reveal a working market town that happens to house a tenth-century monastery. Children in school uniforms chase through Plaza Mayor's arcades while their grandparents occupy benches beneath plane trees, watching delivery vans navigate medieval streets barely wider than a Tesco trolley.
San Juan Bautista de Corias monastery dominates the valley floor two kilometres south of town. They've called it "The Escorial of Asturias" though Philip II's masterpiece never offered monastery rooms from €95 a night. The Parador de Corias occupies a sensitively restored wing where stone corridors lead to contemporary rooms overlooking the Narcea river. British visitors invariably compare prices—"less than a Travelodge in Slough"—while photographing the Roman bridge that once carried the pilgrimage route to Santiago. Morning visits reveal cloisters where monks chant vespers, though check opening times: Spanish heritage sites operate on schedules that would make Network Rail appear punctual.
Back in town, Saturday's market transforms Calle la Vega into Asturias' most authentic food hall before 11am. Local cheese vendors hack into wheels that smell like proper Stilton, while pottery stalls sell black clay cazuelas that crack if subjected to British central heating. The adjacent Wine Museum offers tastings of Cangas' mountain vintages—expect something between Beaujolais and Ribera del Duero rather than Rioja's oak bombs. Three pounds buys a flight of three wines, served by staff who'll explain (through gestures and phrasebook Spanish) how these terraces survived phylloxera while Bordeaux's vineyards died.
The real Cangas reveals itself beyond the town limits. The municipality covers 824 square kilometres—larger than Rutland—with villages scattered through valleys where brown bears still roam. Muniellos forest represents Europe's best-preserved oak woodland, but only twenty visitors daily receive permits to enter. Book online weeks ahead through Spain's environment ministry website; the English form actually works, though you'll need passport details and preferred hiking dates. Those without permits can drive the access road to photography points, but turning up hoping for cancellation works about as well as expecting Southern Rail to run on time.
More accessible walks start from Montegrande's beech forest, where waymarked trails follow traditional cattle paths between hamlets. The three-kilometre route to Tablizas village passes horreos—raised grain stores on stilts—while clouds drift across peaks that separate Asturias from Castile. Autumn brings mushroom hunters carrying wicker baskets and pocket knives, though join a guided group unless you fancy explaining to Spanish emergency services why you ate that particular fungus.
Winter transforms everything. Snow closes the AS-15 periodically between December and March, when temperatures drop to minus five and the Parador's restaurant serves roast kid goat with mountain herbs. Summer brings different challenges: Spanish families descend for fiestas, booking accommodation solid through July's Magdalena celebrations. Late September strikes the balance—wine harvest festivals, walking weather that wouldn't disgrace the Lake District, and hotel rates that drop once August crowds disappear.
The food requires translation rather than interpretation. Cabrito asado tastes like mild lamb rather than goat, served in portions that would feed a Welsh rugby team. Boroña cornbread arrives toasted with local honey—think polenta meets Dorset flapjack. Vegetarians survive on calabaza soup and arroz con leche, though requesting "sin jamón" produces confused looks in bars where every pulse dish starts with pork fat. The Parador's restaurant offers reliable English menus, but venture into Sidrería Narcea on Calle La Solana for locals arguing over football while the owner's grandmother prepares tortilla thicker than a Glasgow phone book.
Practicalities matter here. Mobile signal vanishes in valleys—download offline maps before leaving Britain's roaming zones. Petrol stations close for siesta in surrounding villages; fill up in Cangas before exploring. Cash remains king: many bars display "tarjeta mínimo 20€" signs, assuming card machines work at all. The nearest ATM outside town sits twenty kilometres away in Ibias, a journey that feels longer than Glasgow to Fort William on single-track roads.
British visitors often arrive with coastal Spain expectations—expecting tapas and sangria, finding instead mountain cuisine and wine poured from height like northern cider. The language barrier proves steeper than the surrounding peaks; phrasebook Spanish becomes essential when asking about hiking conditions or requesting that pork-heavy breakfast include something approaching vegetarian. Yet this communication gap creates Cangas' particular magic: no English pub comparisons, no TripAdvisor restaurant rankings, just Spain continuing as it has for centuries while weekend visitors from Oviedo provide the only tourism you're likely to encounter.
Leave before dawn on departure day. The drive west towards Santander airport winds through pre-dawn valleys where village lights twinkle like Yorkshire dales, before the road drops towards coastal plains and familiar Spain reasserts itself. Somewhere near Cabezón, you'll pass the first cider bar advertising "sidrería" in twenty-foot letters, and realise Cangas del Narcea's particular alchemy: Spain's largest municipality that somehow remains its best-kept secret, where wine flows instead of cider and the mountains keep their own counsel about who deserves to discover what lies within their folds.
