Don't get me started about Asturias. I could go on and on about this inexplicably little-visited region wedged between Galicia and Cantabria along the north coast of Spain. I have been known to get very boring about its dramatic landscapes, its superb beaches, its excellent food, its unique pre-Romanesque architecture, its affable locals, and the strange fact that, as yet, few people seem to share my unbridled enthusiasm for the place.
Asturias is very Spanish in some ways, and surprisingly unlike the rest of the country in many others. Its Celtic, Atlantic culture is the polar opposite of the indolent, sherry-sipping, sun-lounging outdoor life of the Mediterranean.
The greenness of Asturias is astounding, especially if you're coming from the parched plains of the Spanish south. You might also argue that the region is a microcosm of Spain as a whole, cramming into its borders everything from snowy mountains to sandy beaches, humble tapas bars to avant-garde restaurants, and from raucous local fiestas to silent valleys where bears and wolves still roam. The community has no fewer than 24 nature reserves, including one parque nacional and three of Spain's largest parques naturales
Where I live, in the Spanish south, three months of spring had gone by without a drop of rain, and the countryside bore a withered, desperate look. Tired of dust and unseasonal heats, I wanted greenness and pleasantness, mountain streams and ocean views. So I worked up a trip, my fourth or fifth to the region, that would take in a little of each of the things I love about Asturias: the rural essences, the modest urban pleasures, the beaches and the wild interior, the simple traditional food and the fab contemporary cuisine.
I'd start out in Oviedo, the delightful capital, counterpoint to the rough-and-tumble harbour town of Gijón, which is the region's second city. I'd then devote a day to cider, another to cheese - because Asturias is the uncontested cheese HQ of Spain - a day to the Alpine landscapes of the Picos de Europa, and another to the coast. I drove north through Castile, taking the motorway that powers through high mountain passes, past lakes and staggering peaks, before turning downhill into a suddenly green world of chestnut woods and rich pastures, and depositing you eventually in Oviedo.
History and geography dictate the way a place looks, feels and tastes. Asturias was a nation and kingdom seven centuries before Fernando and Isabella invented Spain, and it formed the cradle of the reconquista, by which the rest of the peninsula was eventually won back from the Moors. (Indeed, a popular saying has it that "Asturias is Spain - the rest is conquered territory".)
The geographical barrier of the Picos de Europa, cutting off access from the south, made Asturias the most isolated part of the country. Hence, perhaps, the idiosyncrasy. And the omnipresent reek of history. Oviedo has some of Spain's most venerable buildings - such as Santa María del Naranco, an exquisite pre-Romanesque church set in green pastures above the city, built for the Asturian king Ramiro I in the mid-ninth century. San Julián de los Prados, dating from the early ninth century, is a tiny and magical church whose richly painted interior reminds you what a debt Christianity owes to the Orient.
If Asturias is a series of pleasant surprises, Oviedo often comes as the first of them. It's a compact, handsome little city, charmingly buttoned-up, with a provincial and bourgeois air, where people stop on street corners and the women wear their hair in perms. It says something about the fastidious character of Oviedo that here, uniquely for Spain, rubbish collection happens on a daily basis. (It routinely wins awards for Europe's cleanest city.)
Oviedo had star billing along with Barcelona in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Woody is a huge fan of the city, which has responded by putting up a bronze statue of him in the street. There is a lively cultural life here (the Campoamor opera house is a classic 19th-century chocolate-box theatre, where Plácido Domingo and Montserrat Caballé have sung), a superb produce market, some wonderful old pastry shops (Camilo de Blas, Rialto, Peñalba), and two or three of the country's best restaurants. On that first day I had lunch at Casa Fermín, where the day's menu included sea bass with clams, wild local salmon from the Sella river with yogurt and vanilla, and hand-caught octopus with potato cream and parsley oil.
Asturias shares the Spanish passion for food. Traditional cocina asturiana is wonderful in its plainness, honesty, and heartiness. Uncontested monarch of local dishes is the fabada asturiana, a take-no-prisoners stew of fabas (big white beans) with a compendium of smoked meats and sausages. Thereafter comes the rest of the repertoire: fritos de pixín (deep-fried monkfish pieces), vegetable menestra (stew), empanada (a flat savoury pie with a thick crust), torto de maíz (maize-flour flatbread, fried until it puffs up, with various accompaniments) ...
Cheese is a very big deal. Asturian cheeses are many and various, the best of them (like Cabrales, Gamoneu, Afuega'l Pitu, Los Beyos) reflecting in their intense flavours all the verdant richness of the countryside. The seafood, landed at the busy fishing ports of Gijón, Lastres and Avilés, is second to none. Beside the Fontán market in Oviedo I saw a restaurant menu announcing that all its fish was both wild and local - a luxury inconceivable in the fished-out Mediterranean.
There is very little wine made in these northerly latitudes, so what tends to go with all this Asturian food is the Asturian drink by definition: cider. From Oviedo I drove to Nava, cider capital of the region, where José María Osorio, president of the local cidermakers' guild, took me to see a traditional sidrería, the Estrada, which not only makes cider from the fruit of its own apple-trees, but serves it in an oak-lined cider-house, along with plates of cheese and chorizo. The cider was drawn in a powerful jet from a giant chestnut barrel in a gloomy cellar; it was woody and spicy and palate-scouringly dry. Asturias has almost 250 varieties of apple, José María told me, the great majority of which are quickly moving towards extinction. At Valveran, another sidrería, I tasted ciders of the new generation (known as de nueva expresión) which can be served in posh restaurants without anybody raising an eyebrow, and sweet dessert ciders and sparkling ciders and cider brandy, Asturias's answer to Calvados.
The cider-house rules can be a puzzle at first, but they are easily understood with a little observation. Cider in Asturias is always served escanciada, which means the cider is poured into the glass from a great height, the oxygen it acquires on the way down giving the drink an essential kick of freshness. The cider is downed in one, but a little is always left at the bottom of the glass, custom dictating that this must be chucked out onto the floor. The reason for this practice is a mystery, though it seems likely to date back to a Celtic belief in returning to the earth a part of what it gave you.
On a fresh May morning after a rainshower, the sun shone on fields of apple trees loaded with blossom. I turned off the main road and drove inland; to left and right were villages of stone houses with slate roofs and the pagoda-like forms of the hórreos, wooden granaries raised on stone pillars to keep out the rats. Above the villages were hillsides densely wooded with chestnut, pine, and eucalyptus. And in the distance stood a line of mountains sugar-iced with snow: the famous Picos de Europa, so-called because these peaks were the first things mariners saw of the continent when returning from their long expeditions to distant seas.
In the fields round about, brown cows grazed indolently on an ensalada verde of the lushest pasture I had ever seen. Asturias is dairy central. In a country not traditionally fond of dairy products, this is one region that loves them unashamedly. An estimated 40 different cheeses are produced within its borders, three of which have Denominación de Origen status. Few places in the world - even in France - can boast such cheesy variety over such a modest surface area.
The Cotera Diaz family have their home and dairy in the village of Arenas de Cabrales, but keep their 28 cows in a stable beside the Cares river. When I visited, the husband and wife were busy milking, the rattle of a generator mingling with the roar of a mountain river swollen with ice-melt from the high sierra. (Its waters were blue-grey, and crystal clear.) The family specialise in Cabrales, a blue cheese which is one of Spain's finest and a worthy rival to both Stilton and Roquefort. It packs a powerful punch, and often benefits from a good draught of cider to soften its piquant aftertaste.
While the parents worked, their son explained to me the family's traditional routine, common among cheese-making families hereabouts. As soon as school closes in June, the family goes up into the high pastures of the Picos, where they spend the whole summer with the herd, making cheeses which will be brought down in September to cure in special caves.
The custom of transhumance has declined, but the caves are still an irreplaceable element in the making of both Cabrales and the other great Asturian blue cheese, Gamonedo. After a simple but highly calorific lunch at Casa Morán in Benia de Onis (fabada followed by arroz con leche, number one Asturian dessert and a rice pudding to conjure with), I visited the Cotera Diaz family cave, a dripping corridor bored into the mountainside, with the maturing Cabrales laid out on wooden shelves. Inside it was damp and dark and musty, with a powerful stink in the oxygen-deprived atmosphere that would send claustrophics and cheese-haters screaming into the fresh air.
Next day I met up with Guillermo Mañana, a retired doctor whose overriding passion is the Asturian mountain landscape. Guillermo has spent most of his life exploring every nook and cranny, every peak and valley of the Somiedo and Redes nature reserves, the primordial woodlands of Muñiellos, and his greatest love, the magic mountains of Picos de Europa. He proposed a simple half-day trek following the river Cares from its birthplace in the heights of the sierra down a narrow mountain gorge, the Desfiladero del Rio Cares.
We began in the village of Caín, for centuries cut off entirely from the outside world and, as its name might suggest, regarded by outsiders as a village of the damned. From there we entered the gorge, a dark canyon of Tolkien-esque proportions, with a path carved out of the rock face skirting the cliffs. From far below us came the muffled thunder of the river. Far above, in the gap between the cliffs, if you strained your neck and watched your footsteps, you could just see the snow-capped peaks, sparkling in the sun.
It was an unforgettable walk, and the lunch at the end of it wasn't bad either: 11 courses of menú degustación at the Michelin-starred Casa Marcial in Arriondas, which along with Casa Gerardo in Prendes, is the most important showcase for the new Asturian cuisine. Nacho Manzano, chef at Casa Marcial, cooks and lives in the village house where he was born and grew up, and where his parents had a small shop that sold everything from socks and shoes to tinned sardines. There was a dance hall on the first floor, a cider press in the basement.
Over the years Nacho has brought his modernisation of cocina asturiana to a high pitch of refinement: his torto de maíz is as light as feather, his arroz con pitu de caleya (a rice dish made with the meat of a free-range cockerel) is densely flavoured and accompanied by a scallop somehow deliciously aromatised with fresh cucumber and green pepper.
As night fell a cold dank mist rolled down from the mountains. My luck had run out, I told myself: the rain, regular protagonist of the Asturian climate, was back. By the morning, however, it had cleared again and the atmosphere was uncannily bright, like when you turned up the contrast and colour on an old TV set. Perfect weather for beach-hunting. I turned back towards Oviedo on the E70 and drove from west to east along the Asturian coast - rebaptised for the incipient tourist market as the Costa Verde.
For years I have been saying to anyone who'd listen that some of the best beaches in the country are to be found along this stretch of coast. At Barayo, for instance, a pristine valley protected from all possible development, inhabited only by otters, the river reaches the sea in a majestic arc of sand. Or Playa del Silencio, aptly named, where dramatic rock formations encircle a lonely beach; or, loveliest of all, Torimbia, a mouthwateringly beautiful sandy bay, utterly unspoilt, which like all the world's best beaches, can only be reached on foot. On this May morning at Torimbia there wasn't a soul to be seen; the water was as calm as a mirror, and an appetising, if misleading shade of glassy blue. (Misleading, because the Atlantic is not the Med, and only in the months of July and August would most people think it wise to immerse themselves in it.)
So the Costa Verde has unspoilt beaches; it also has a series of unspoilt harbour towns strung along the coast like a pearl necklace. Ribadesella - once the summer stamping-ground of the Princess Letizia, wife of Prince Felipe, heir to the Spanish throne - and Cudillero, picturesque yet genuine. Lastres is a proper fishing village with winding cobbled streets - you could be in Cornwall. At Llanes, in the far east, a long thin harbour winds up from the sea into a medieval quarter with crumbly palaces, and the sculptor Agustín Ibarrola has painted the concrete cubes of the harbour wall in dazzling colours and madcap designs.
Outside Llanes, easternmost of Asturian coastal towns, is where the idyll ends. I was shocked to see the building going on in the strip of land between the mountains and the sea, the rash of ugly urbanizaciones built mostly as second homes for holidaymakers from the Basque country, and the wide swathe of brand-new motorway, built to give them easier access to what is increasingly a colony of Bilbao. Sad to say, no lessons have been learned from the destruction of Spain's other costas, and it seems that even this pristine coastline is on the way to being ruined, and that there is nothing you or I can do about it.
Perhaps the only solution is for you and me to get there while there's still time, and to tell our friends. I always tell mine that the coast of Asturias - along with the mountains, the architecture, the people, and the food - is almost certainly one of Spain's last great unknown treasures. But then I would say that.
How to get to the heart of the Asturias
Getting there
Easyjet (0905 821 0905; easyjet.com) has daily flights from Stansted to Asturias airport in Ranón, half an hour by car or bus from Oviedo, from £46 return; Ryanair (0871 246 0000; ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Santander, two hours by car, bus or train from Oviedo, from £21 return. Brittany Ferries (0871 244 0439; brittany-ferries.co.uk) runs ferries from Portsmouth and Plymouth to Santander (20-24 hours) from £167 return for two adults and a car.
Where to eat
Casa Fermín, Oviedo (00 34 985 216452; casafermin.com); Casa Morán, Benia de Onis (00 34 985 844006); Casa Marcial, Arriondas (00 34 985 840991; casamarcial.com)
Where to stay
Hotel Fruela (00 34 985 208120; hotelfruela.com) is a friendly, simple hotel in the centre of Oviedo and good value at €70 for a double room.
Hotel Casona del Busto in Pravia near Aviles (00 34 985 822771; casonadelbusto.es) is an unpretentious three-star hotel in a 16th-century mansion frequented by the diarist and thinker Jovellanos. It's minutes from the beach and 10km from Asturias airport. Doubles from €84.
Hotel Balcón de la Cuesta (00 34 985 417429; arceahoteles.com) is a chic and comfortable new hotel in the valley of Andrin, just outside Llanes. The 17 rooms are all suites, and cost from €90.
Palacio de Rubianes, Cereceda (00 34 985 707612; palacioderubianes.com), recently opened in a historic country house with magnificent views of the Sueve mountains and Picos de Europa. Doubles from €105.
• Find more information about the region at infoasturias.com
