Fuente De Picos de Europa Spain

Travelled: 17km to Fuente De cable car and back to overnight stay near Mogrovejo picnic area (43.1356,-4.7151) walked 16km from top of cable car back down to the village.

After our coffee we drove up to the Fuente De cable car. 

We were a little discouraged by the low cloud but nevertheless parked up and prepared ourselves for the 10am opening.

We began to que up at 9:15 and by 10 am there were over 100 people lining up. We purchased a return ticket €17 each (one way €11), as we weren’t too sure wether we wanted to walk back. I then had a last minute dash to get masks for the 4min ride in the cable car!  Anyway we got on the second cable car and ascended 750m through the cloud and to a spectacular sunny mountain top at 1850m alt. It is the 3rd longest in the world and the longest in Europe with a single span. 

At the top we took in the view at the cable car station.

Then we began our walk on the PR PNPE 24 to Hotel Avila (3.5km). 

The views of the rocky plateau were breathtaking. Along with the views of the the pastures and meadows. We spotted a chamois.

A little further on we passed the Chalet Real, a Royal hunting lodge back in the day, surrounded by cows, horses and sheep.

The guard dog for the sheep.

View back to Chalet Real.

An hour and a half later we arrived at Hotel Avila and we enjoyed a drink and ate our sandwiches on the terrace enjoying the magnificent views. The descent so far had been gradual so we decided that instead of going back to the cable car we would continue on the route 24 for another 10km or so. 

At the 8km mark we took the track to the right back towards Fuente De. The track became rocky and step down into the beech forest which offered us some shade and reposts from the heat. Underfoot was muddy in some sections and we also trekked uphill for a change. We joined up with another Australian couple from Melbourne exchanging travel stories as we walked. 

Some lovely flowers along the way..

More views along the way..

Unfortunately as we reached the end of our descent reaching the the main road we realised that we may have missed a turn off that would have taken us straight back to the start of the cable car. So we had to trudge up along the asphalt an extra 2km or so back to Bluey.

Close up of the cable car station 
 

Fit bit tracking our progress.. paused it while we were resting at Hotel Avila.

Time to recover… feet soaking in cold bucket of water, a beer and then a cold shower. The sun was pelting down on Bluey so we high tailed it out of there to a lovely shady spot a few kilometres back down the hill.

Red dot is Fuente De.

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