Somiedo: Northern Spain’s Mountainous Biosphere Reserve

Just southeast of the Asturian capital city of Oviedo, adventurous visitors can do a deep dive into that Spanish region’s industrial past, literally so by donning overalls, boots and gloves and grabbing a hard hat and lamp to descend into the old coal mine at Pozo Sotón.

Pozo Sotón is one of several such former operations in which today erstwhile miners serve as your (literally so sometimes) hands on guides. For them, it’s a far cry experience from that of their forebearers who in the 1930s went on strike, only to have their movement ultimately crushed by the Franco regime.

Once geared up and given a detailed safety rundown, you hop in elevators whose hulking, exposed tower wheels look like they’ve seen better days to descend some 2,000 feet. After a ride in a cranky old tram for a good mile through a tunnel, the real work begins. It’s not for the faint of heart with several clambering efforts required straight up and down timber scaffolding within tight vertical shafts that look like they could use some additional shoring up. But then, you get to take a whack yourself with a pneumatic drill at a coal vein and your small lode is yours to take home for all your sweaty efforts.

Another slice of local mining history nicely turned into a positive, and in this case green, experience is a former mining railway line southwest of Oviedo that is now known as the Senda del Oso, or the Bear Trail. It’s an easy-grade hiking/biking track that follows the Trubia River for forty miles, taking you through tunnels and past a small sanctuary for the Cantabrian brown bears, of which some 250 remain in the wild. The young, fit staff at Centro BTT at the edge of the town of Tuñon will provide you bikes and escorts.

Traveling on a westward trek across the Cantabrian Mountain range, and edging closer to Asturias’s neighboring Galicia region, you enter the Somiedo Natural Park which, like the Picos de Europa massif to the east, doubles as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

Here, the braña represents the ancient system of transhumance, or livestock herding in which locals take advantage of Somiedo’s higher pastures over the summer grazing period. Geologic faulting of some ridges here appears at crazy sharp degrees, but if you grab some binoculars and scan anywhere high up the slopes where flatter spaces stand out, you’ll see traditional teitos, or thatched-roof stone huts dotting the braña pastoral setting. Elsewhere off the main road, you can enter a few very basic teitos on your own which pastoralists shared with their livestock over certain periods.

In the hamlet of Veigas, a branch of the Ecomuseo de Somiedo consists of three fully inhabitable teito houses of the type in which pastoralists and farmers eked out a living until not that long ago. A local guide will explain traditional life in the bare-bones kitchen and the uses of various tools stored in other small functional spaces.

Another element of traditional Asturian life found all over the region from the Cantabrian Mountains down to Cantabrian Sea communities are hórreos. Typically raised on stilts and with tile or thatched roofs, hórreos are wooden granaries which for all their rustic simplicity are utterly elegant as well in their proportions. With their square format, the occassional ones today double as a carport with room for at least one vehicle parked under them.

Surrounded by limestone peaks, Pola de Somiedo looks like a ski town, and its modest Hotel Castillo de Alba has that cozy après-ski vibe. But the town and inn cater more to hikers, as does a little village higher up called Lago del Valle where, as you’d expect from the name, there is a lake reached by the sturdy of foot. Like so many even modest inns in Asturias, the Castillo’s in-house restaurant with its traditional cuisine of stews and grilled meats is worth traveling for alone.

As you come and go at a crossroads along the Somiedo river into the Somiedo Natural Park, you can’t help but admire a huge stone building with two-story-high arched windows. It is so elegant that you wonder if it could be a boutique hotel. Surprise, its the early-20th-century Malva hydroelectric plant. And if they ever do decide to turn it into a hotel, you’ll be the first to come back.

Note: The best way to see the Cantabrian Mountains and the Picos de Europa range is with the right nature guide. With his trusty van sitting high above a set of kick-ass tires, Fernando Abarquero owns and operates a little outfit called Pro Natura. As he negotiates twisty mountain roads, Fernando can discourse passionately on all manner of flora and fauna and on the crucial human element here that needs to be further sustained in times of great change, both climactic and cultural.