PiCOS DE EUROPA: Northern Spain's MOST BEAUTIFUL Nationalpark with a motorcycle

Only 20 kilometers from the Atlantic coast of Spain, there's a picturesque, rugged mountain chain. A beautiful inhabited national park. And one of the places that I visited before, but that I had a big urge to return to. Join a road trip to the Spanish Picos de Europa, the summits of Europe. Hello guys, it's me. Even though you might not be used to this windshield, I'm riding my travel partner's Africa Twin today because I actually never really drove it. It's very high. I mean, the seat is very high because he has a special suspension and super high seat. So I barely can reach the ground with my feet. That's why I didn't really try it on our West Africa trip. But this road here is just nice enough and has enough curves to really try it. So let's go for this. Route CA282 is one of the best roads to approach the national park of the Picos de Europa from the east. A beautiful curvy and mountainous ride until you hit N621. One of the main roads along the Picos de Europa National Park. So this road here I had basically leads along the Picos de Europa National Park and we turn right here. Route N621 is considered a great motorcycle road. Especially the southern section to Riano is worth a ride. We turned north though because literally everything was booked again due to us traveling in the main holiday season. And the only hotel we found was at the other end of the national park. So, a ludicrously stunning ride. I think this is a really great welcome to the Piscos de Europa. Oh no, did I just say Pisco again? Oh my God, I think I earned a proper drink tonight after talking about Piscos all day. Pico, Pico, it should be. So we just changed our bikes again. I'm back on my Tenere. Nothing wrong with the Africa Twin. It's a really nice motorcycle. But to me it feels more like it's weight is closer to my Triumph Tiger 800 or even the 1200 GS I rode to North Cape than to my Tenere. If you ask me, Tenere for travel bike president. At the village Panis, we turned onto route AS114 and drove another curvy detour on route AS345 on the way to our hotel. For everyone out there, I can highly recommend this little detour. But basically as soon as you get close to the national park Piscos de Europa, all roads are kind of nice and worth the ride. So you literally, you can't do anything wrong. That's the end of our little detour. And now we really go to our hotel. This town here looks pretty nice though. So if not everything is booked, maybe that's a very good option to stay. Spread across 11 villages, Piscos de Europa is Spain's only inhabited nature reserve, offering travelers a unique experience. Rural life and nature have coexisted in this unique environment for centuries. Look at this view here on my left. That's the Piscos de Europa. And now you know why I really wanted to take you here. The view was definitely the best asset of the hotel that we stayed in. But the next morning surprised us with some gray clouds. There they are. Good morning to another day of riding in Spain. So today we had the luxury of a garage for our motorcycles. And now we will go to explore the Piscos de Europa here in Spain. Good morning, everyone. We are basically going back the same way we came yesterday, but then we will turn off and look at a gravel road that is supposed to be nice. I say we look at it because my travel partner's doctor actually strictly forbid him to ride off-road. But I will quote my mother who always says, looking at something doesn't cost anything. So that's what we're going to do. At the town Las Arenas, we crossed Rio Casano and continued on route AS264 that takes you to the starting point of one of the most famous hiking routes in Spain, Ruta del Cares. The path is said to be the most beautiful hike in the Piscos de Europa and takes you through deep river gorges. But even when riding on a motorcycle, you get an idea of what this hiking route could look like when riding along the steep, rocky cliffs of the Piscos. After this big parking space here where the hikers to this famous hike take off, this road has gotten really empty and just awesome to ride. Finally, we have the curves of the Piscos all to ourselves. Spread across the provinces of Asturias, Cantabria, and Leon, the Piscos de Europa National Park is a perfect example of an Atlantic ecosystem. It is packed with oak and beech groves and home to two of the most emblematic animals to live in Spain, the brown bear and the Iberian wolf. Only 20 kilometers from the Atlantic, the Piscos tower imposingly to an altitude of 2,600 meters. The picturesque rugged mountains got their name Piscos de Europa, which means summits of Europe from Spanish sailors because the mountains of the Piscos were the first thing they saw of mainland Europe when they returned home. So a bit more traffic here because we are approaching the town now from where the gravel road is supposed to start. And the town is called Sotres and it's supposed to be quite nice. It was love at the first sight. So if any one of you plans a visit to the Piscos de Europa, stay in Sotres. It is the perfect idyllic little mountain town to start your adventures from. Okay, Espinama, recto. Is the road good? Good. Now we will see how this is. Weather is not so good. I hope it's not too slippery. I'm a bit worried about my travel partner's injured ankle because he will just say, yeah, yeah, let's continue, even if his ankle hurts. So we will have to be careful. Our initial plan was to ride from Sotres to Espinama, a supposedly beautiful route along the ridge of a mountain with views on some of the most famous peaks of the Picos. But reality had other plans. What did they say? The road is very bad further up and it's completely slippery. Then maybe we ride to the houses there. So we still decided to continue further, even though the driver of the car said we should turn around but the road here feels so nice and easy and it's actually beautiful. So I don't know about stopping and turning around. The promise of some nice views was still giving us enough motivation to travel further. And indeed, even though it got more and more foggy, the ride was still absolutely stunning. Is it very foggy? Fog, yes, there is fog here. Oh no. Yes, we can't see anything. Oh no. Anything. Nothing? Nothing, nothing, nothing. It's all fog. Then it's useless. No, it's not a bad day. Oh. So we wanted to drive this gravel road and we just met some guys who did it, one car that said the road is not so good and some motorcyclists who said the road is okay. But you can see it behind me, it's all fog and you can't see. So we decided to leave it for another time and go somewhere less foggy. Even though the nice motorcyclists we met told us that it would not be worth to continue the trip because there was only dense fog and our gut feel told us the same, I couldn't let go of my hope to see the famous peaks of the Picos. So I flew the drone up high in the sky to eventually break through the fog. But the only thing I learned was to listen to others because like everyone said, there was literally nothing but fog. Too bad that we couldn't continue, but I'm as well happy that we turned around now. I think the risk of dropping the bike on an off-road stretch in the dense fog where you don't see properly was just too big for our both health situation. And I'm still enjoying this here though. It's an absolutely stunning area. I can only imagine how stunning it must look if there is no fog. The bad thing was that we couldn't take the road we had hoped because of the dense fog. The good thing was though that we had to ride back the same road we came, only that it was completely empty this time and we had all the amazing curves to ourselves. Very hungry, time for a late lunch now. Our stop to the Picos de Europa, you see them behind me still, has been a rather short one and we are continuing direction France back now and we go a little bit of autobahn today. The fog had ruined a little bit of our riding this day, but we were not too sad and used our time wisely. Thank you for joining our little off-road adventure to the Picos de Europa and I can promise you, it will not be the last. Leave me a comment and a thumbs up if you like this video and don't forget to hit the bell button and subscribe to my channel for new videos each Thursday. In the next episode, we will ride through the famous mountains of the Pyrenees between France and Spain and we will have to deal with some more weather challenges.