Degaña

The road signs switch between Degaña and Degana depending which side of the valley you enter from. Both spellings point to the same scatter of slate roofs huddled at 700 m, where mobile signal drops to one bar and the evening air smells of wood smoke even in July. Roughly 900 people live here year-round, enough to support one bar, one honey producer and a church whose bells still mark the hours for farmers who walk their cows across the main road at dawn.

Slate, Smoke and Silence

The architecture is practical, not pretty. Dark schist walls absorb heat in winter and stay cool in August; tiny windows face away from the prevailing wind. In Cerredo, the largest hamlet, a single street of two-storey houses ends at a slate fountain where neighbours fill plastic jugs rather than trust the tap. Walk uphill past the last cottage and the tarmac gives way to a stony track that climbs through bracken towards the glacial lakes. Within ten minutes the only sounds are your boots and the river Narcea foaming through the gorge below.

That river once carried timber and trout downstream to Cangas del Narcea, 35 km away. Today the road reversal is more useful: visitors stock up on cash and petrol there before the final 45-minute ascent on the AS-15, a serpentine lane that narrows whenever two tractors meet. Buses do run, but the midday service from Oviedo turns back at the pass if the driver reckons the fog too thick. Having wheels matters, yet once parked the best strategy is to leave the car and keep walking.

Lakes that Do Not Give Themselves Easily

The Senda Moura is the classic day circuit: five hours, 550 m of ascent, three tiny lakes that sit like slate mirrors in a bowl of heather. English hikers on TripAdvisor call the chain “the hidden-gem day hike” then warn that the middle section is a bog even after a week of sun. The path is way-marked but the paint flashes are the same grey as the rock; losing the line costs twenty minutes of bramble wrestling. Start early—parking at the trailhead fills by ten at weekends—and carry two litres of water: the lakes are pristine but also sheep territory, so filtering is wise.

Autumn colours arrive late, usually the second week of October, when beech and birch flare orange against dark stone. Mushroom pickers appear overnight, knives at belt, speaking in low voices as if volume might scare the chanterelles. Foreigners are welcome provided they carry the official regional permit (five euros, printable online) and do not bag more than three kilos. The guarda forestal checks rucksacks at the trailhead car park; fines start at €300 and nobody accepts “I didn’t know” as an excuse.

What You’ll Actually Eat

Evening meals hinge on whatever the owner’s mother cooked earlier. Expect cabbage-and-bean stew thickened with pancetta, or river trout served whole because filleting would waste the best flesh behind the head. Vegetarians survive by ordering the same stew sin morcilla—ask before it reaches the table; once the blood sausage is in, it is in. The local red, bottled over the hill in Cangas, tastes like Beaujolais with more tannin and costs €12 a bottle in the bar, €6 if you walk round to the winery gate.

Pudding is usually cuajada, a set yoghurt drizzled with heather honey. Brits buy the honey to take home; the producer keeps a crate of 500 g jars behind the counter because airport security confiscates anything larger. Taste before you commit: the late-summer harvest carries a faint menthol note from flowering eucalyptus that divides opinion like Marmite.

Bears, Bogs and Bad Weather

Cantabrian brown bears roam the ridges above the lakes. They avoid humans, but dusk and dawn are their commuting hours, so make noise on the trail and never leave a rucksack unattended while you photograph orchids. A Dutch walker who left salami sandwiches at the lakeside last spring returned to find claw marks across his pack and a local headline that still raises laughs in the bar.

Fog is the real hazard. It rolls up the valley faster than you can tighten bootlaces, turning cairns into ghost shapes and every stone into identical wet slate. Download an offline map the night before—phone signal vanishes at the first bend—and pack a foil blanket. Even in July the temperature can drop ten degrees in fifteen minutes; hypothermia cases arrive at the health centre most months, usually wearing shorts and a hopeful expression.

When to Bother Turning Up

May and mid-September give the best odds: long daylight, stable weather, meadows loud with cowbells. July and August are warm enough to sit outside at 9 p.m. but the village fills with Spanish second-home owners; parking spaces shrink and the bar runs out of trout by eight. Winter brings snow that prettifies the roofs but also blocks the AS-15 for days. Chains are compulsory from November to April; without them the Guardia Civil simply wave you back down the mountain.

Accommodation is limited to four guesthouses, two of which close outside school holidays. Book by phone—email is answered sporadically—and confirm breakfast the night before. Sheets are cotton, heating is wood-fired and checkout is 11 a.m. sharp because the owner needs the room for drying chestnuts.

The Honest Verdict

Degana will not entertain anyone who measures a holiday in tick-box attractions. There is no cathedral, no gift shop, no evening promenade. What it offers instead is a scale that still makes sense: you can walk from your door to a ridge where the only lights at night are the stars and, very occasionally, the glow of a bear hunter’s cigarette. Come prepared to move slowly, to get wet, to eat what is put in front of you, and to feel, for a day or two, that the map really might end just beyond the next cairn.