Asturias trip report - 4

With a weather forecast for a clear blue sky, sunshine and temperatures in the low 20's C, a walk was needed with scenery, shade, fresh water and some interest. Paloma suggested the walk from Orllé to Majada de Melordaña, wildflowers, woodland, a gorge to scramble up and historic summer dwellings. Photographic ambitions were restricted to a narrative of documenting some of the sights along the way. Orllé is a small town nucleated on south facing slopes, on the north side of its namesake river and immediately surrounded by small scale fields (hay meadows?) and woodland. The track to Majada de Melordaña essentially follows the course of the Rio Orlé upstream, passing hay meadows and then into open countryside.

Wild cherry in flower

Along one section, the track cut into the hill slope revealing exposures of angular fragments of dolomite cemented by flowstone. Extrapolating the extent of the exposures and their thickness suggested extensive period(s) of periglacial weathering/slope processes and an insight into the geomorphology of the Rio Orlé valley.

The walk exits open grazing land and enters a wooded gorge where the river had cut down through steeply inclined bedrock and evidence for historic rock falls.

Steeply inclined bedrock and flowering Spanish heath (Erica Australis)

The track through rock fall debris

Many of the wildflowers and flora growing alongside the track through the woodland, were familiar from UK woodlands designated as ancient.

Wood Anemone (Anemone nemorosa)

Outsize hazel coppice stools

Great Wood Rush (Luzula sylvatica)

Oxlip (Primula elatior)

At the hamlet of Conforcos, I was impressed with an historic hunting lodge, now derelict, sited in a particularly photogenic location and I think there would be some potential with the scene in autumn with better lighting.

Next stop was the Foz Melordaña where the Rio Secu emerges from a gorge into a mass of boulders and woodland with outsize beech coppice stools. The opportunity was taken to cool our feet in the water of the Rio Secu, before heading on up through the gorge.

Coppiced beech ~ Foz Melordaña

The scrambling and traverse through the gorge presented no difficulty in dry weather and exiting the gorge we arrived at the Majada de Melordaña.

Majada de Melordaña

The Majada de Melordaña is the site of derelict cabañas (summer huts) once used by pastoral herdsman/shepherds looking after grazing livestock on the Braña. The cabañas were very similar in size to the numerous ruined hafods (Wales) and sheilings (Scotland) that I had encountered in the uplands of the UK.

Majada de Melordaña

Some of the roof slabs/tiles displayed ripple marks and most of the building stone to my eyes appeared to have originated from an outcrop on a hill side a few hundred metres to the west above a grove of Holly trees.

Ash trees grew in close proximity to some cabañas and a likely source of fire wood that produces a useful heat even when 'green'. I would have liked to investigate the yew trees growing on the limestone outcrops, the binoculars indicated some yews to be of some girth, sadly the heat and fatigue sapped my curiosity.

The return journey to Orllé bypassed the gorge through a beech woodland where spurge  (Euphorbia spp) was conspicuous in an area where trees had been cleared in the widening of a new track .

It had been an interesting excursion and the final one of our stay in Redes Natural Park.