Camino del Norte 17: Food

From Ribadesella to Colungna was 20km. It was another five to see the dinosaurs.

So last night we had a great meal in our hotel’s Michelin starred restaurant. We failed to take full advantage – because of walking – and ate from the menu instead of having the degustación menu, but it was interesting and tasty. We ate at the unfashionably early hour of 8:30 and so for the second night in a row were the only customers, until a Spanish couple turned up at 9:30.

We knew today wouldn’t be too tough and there was no rain forecast, so we had breakfast before setting out. Then it was lovely backroads and coastal walks. We had snacks in a great cool bar by the beach and then turned inland towards Colugna where we are staying tonight.

There isn’t a lot to Colugna so when we walked in around 2pm we decided to have a full lunch and had the menu of the day in a family restaurant which was all Asturian classics. It was a contrast to last night; when I asked for some wine glasses to go with our wine the grandmother gestured dismissively to the tumblers on the table and said ‘won’t those do?’. But it was a really good meal (and, realistically, much better value).

After lunch we felt the need to walk off some calories so we headed out to the coast to see fossilized dinosaur footprints. It turns out that dinosaur footprints are mostly very similar to dents in rocks, but there were a couple of really clear sauropod prints from 120 million years ago – which is something special to contemplate.