Lakes of Covadonga
7/22/2025
We drove about 2 hours west/southwest to Pico de Europa National Park for a day of hiking. One fail on our part was not getting bus tickets sooner. During the summer, they close the road to traffic (with good reason). You must park in one of three lots below and take a bus up. Unfortunately, we waited until the day before to get our bus tickets only to discover that the earliest availability up was around 2pm and the only availability back down was around 9pm. Since it was the only day that the weather looked decent, we had to go for it.
According to the website, there are a couple restaurants up on the mountain, so we figured we could kill time waiting for the bus back down the mountain sitting in a restaurant drinking wine and having a bite to eat. Wrong! The restaurant closed at about 6:30. Even the bathrooms closed long before the bus arrived! So we were literally stuck just sitting in the cold waiting for the bus with a bunch of other hikers who, like us, probably waited until the last minute to book their tickets as well! If anyone reading this ever goes to Pico de Europa, just be sure to get your bus tickets early (or at least earlier than the day before!)
Because our bus ticket into the national park wasn’t until 2:00, we had time to stop in a cool little town (Cangas de Onis) not far from the park entrance that had a pretty amazing old stone bridge. The bridge was built in the 14th century, and although it is not from the Roman era, it stand where an original Roman bridge once stood.
After wandering around Cangas de Onis a little, we headed to the bus stop to catch our bus up the mountain. The ride was about 30 minutes of winding steep climbs, and frankly, I was glad we weren’t able to drive it ourselves. Once we made it up the mountain, the views were pretty breathtaking. We hiked around the Lakes of Covadonga… actually, Grady and I hiked around one. Brian and Emily did the full hike and went all the around the other lake! They said it was AMAZING! We were drinking wine while they did their extra hiking!
Part of the hike had some old mine shafts and tunnels from past mining operations of zinc and other minerals that were kind of interesting.
One thing we loved about this park were all the cows and sheep. The sound of cow bells was pretty cool and reminded us a bit of Switzerland. To be clear, although the hike was beautiful and the cow bells were reminiscent of Switzerland, nothing can compare to the hikes in Switzerland! But this was still really nice. The cows were everywhere… on the hiking paths, laying on the road (the bus had to honk a few times to get them to move), and even on the stairs leading to the bathrooms!
Perhaps our favorite part of the day was watching a little flock of sheep come through. Mostly we just saw them grazing and eating, but at one point about 10-15 came past us on the road with their dog following along keeping them on track. We stood and watched them go by and then three additional sheep stragglers emerged “yelling” to their friends to wait up. All the sheep and the dog stopped and waited for the three stragglers to catch up. It was so comical! The flock was yelling at the stragglers to hurry up and the stragglers were yelling back to wait for them! The dog just waited patiently. Once they caught up, they all shut up and went on their way. It was THE CUTEST FREAKING THING! Personally, it was the highlight of my day. Or as Grady so cleverly put it, “sheep entertainment!” (get it?!)
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