8th Colour Landscape Photography: Asturias trip report

Next up on the itinerary was a stay at the Hotel rural Los Riegos in the Redes Natural Park run by two biologists : Sergio and Paloma. Their knowledge, guidance and insight was invaluable, which meant we undertook some excursions that otherwise would have been overlooked and consequently we extended our stay from 2 to 4 nights. After unpacking there was time for a late afternoon excursion and enquiring about a suitable walk in old woodland with spring flowers, Paloma recommended one and provided a map.

Veteran beech pollards

The walk was along old trackways in places lined with beech pollards, through predominantly beech woodland. The size of some pollards and coppice stools indicated a great age to the trees and a long history of woodland management. Natural regeneration was evident with a mix of age ranges of saplings to young trees and in places dead wood was being conserved as a habitat resource, the woodlands appeared to be managed for conservation too.

Beech woodland

The trees provided a habitat for communities of bryophytes and lichens, that might interest a specialist.

Some of the woodland flora was familiar from the UK.

Wood Sorrel (Oxalis acetosella)

Whilst other flora was not so familiar and Dog's tooth violets once again put in an appearance.

Hollow-root is classified as a neophyte in the UK.

Hollow-root (Corydalis cava )

It was a surprise to stumble upon St Patrick's Cabbage in a beech wood ~1,200 metres asl, the first indication was a group of emerging plants and then an actual specimen ready to flower. St Patrick's cabbage is part of the Lusitanian flora an enigma in plant distribution.

St Patrick's cabbage (Saxifraga spathularis)

It was a good interesting walk and did not require a huge amount of imagination to see the potential for Autumnal colour.

The next day a walk was selected for its geology, geomorphology and scenery, starting from Caleao to the Desfiladero de los Arrudos. Surrounding Caleao are a patchwork of small fields that appeared to be farmed in a traditional manner, some fields were being manured.

A landscape of traditional small scale farming

A trackway of some age.

View over farmland to the outer gorge cutting through limestone/dolostone lithologies

Downstream of the gorge is an extensive alluvial fan of boulders, many imbricated and deposited when the stream capacity of the palaeo-Arrudos dropped exiting the gorge. The size of the boulders indicate an event(s) where extremely high volumes of water flowed through the gorge. The boulder deposit had subsequently been colonised by woodland with many trees pollarded or coppiced.

One interesting flower was Angel's Tears, a native daffodil whose distribution seemed to be intimately associated with the underlying bedrock geology.

Angel's Tears (Narcissus triandrus)

In the main gorge there was compelling evidence for comparatively recent rock fall debris free from mosses, overlaying older rock fall debris colonised by mosses.

Rock fall debris chronology

The main gorge is formed from the Arrudos cutting down through steeply inclined beds of sedimentary rocks, predominantly almost pure quartz sandstones with occasional beds of shale. The depth of the gorge and the contrast between the gorge sides with ragged outcropping beds on one side and 'smooth' bedding plane surfaces on the other, is dramatic and visually impressive.