Week 3 – Saturday 19th July – Oviedo and Cudillero

These couple of days are getting us across the top of Spain to Santiago De Compostella, so today’s trip is going to get us half way there and let us do a bit of sight seeing along the way.

Two hours of motorway driving got us to Oviedo. Considered one of the most beautiful cities in Northern Spain, it is also the oldest Christian city in Spain. On top of that, its location meant it was a good point to have a stop off along the way. Being Saturday lunch time when we arrived in the town square, weddings were the order of the day, with all the Spanish women dressed in their finery to celebrate the day with friends and relatives. Making everything match in Spain is very important and they are exceptionally good at it, although I’d have to say that the standards in Northern Spain aren’t quite as high as they are in Andalucia. I thought the woman in the dress crocs was, however, letting the side down somewhat even if they were fluorescent green, so passed the colourful test.

Unbeknown to me, the Spanish have bag pipes. There are several different types, but there was a band playing Asturian pipes in the town square. Of the two types of bag pipes that I’ve now heard, the sound of the pipes and the dress that the musicians wear seems to reflect the climate and mood of the people – Scottish being deep and dark, while the Spanish pipes have a much more jovial tone and the musicians wear much more colorful uniforms.

From Oviedo, we headed to Cudillero a very small fishing port about 60ks along the road to Santiago to find our hotel for the evening. It was tucked away in an even smaller town and after a very late seafood lunch in Cudillero, accompanied by the heavy beat sounds of the local boy racer car meet and sound off, we retired to our hotel for the evening to watch the qualifying for the US MotoGP