Countdown to Picos

[Bierzo Baggie]

4. The Mecca of rock climbing.
El Naranjo de Bulnes isn’t the highest peak in Picos but it’s certainly the most recognizable and the most emblematic of all of them. This time to use the word “inaccessible” is no exaggeration. It’s an awesome lump of rock that rises from the rockscape like some great dinosaur of rock. Rock on! Hmmm.

It’s a real test for climbers with all the proper climbing gear. I for one would never, ever be able to scale it or anything similar due to my fear of heights (or rather my fear of the floor) but many do every year, following a myriad of routes of varying difficulties (from “difficult” to “holy Jesus!”

And here, hanging permanently from those terrible walls of Naranjo de Bulnes, are the ghosts of two of the most important figures in the history of the Picos de Europa.

One was The Marques of Villaviciosa, founder of the national park of Picos, the first national park of its kind in Spain. The Marques was an aristocrat, a lawyer, an Olympian (Paris 1900; silver medallist in shooting) a writer, a politician and a gentleman. He travelled the world and he died in 1941 aged 71.

The other was “el cainejo” a shepherd from Caín and life was hard in Caín to unimaginable extremes. El Cainejo’s three sons all died young in tragic accidents, one was shot, another drowned and the third fell off a rock as did his mother in law and a son in law too. El Cainejo survived them all but still didn’t make it to retirement age being gored to death by one of his own rams.

They say he was blessed with big hands and short muscular legs and that he climbed like an orang-utan.

This unlikely partnership formed by two men from worlds apart was to enter Picos mythology as Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing did in the Himalayas. Together they were the first to scale the Naranjo de Bulnes in 1904. The Marques trained by climbing in the Alps and the Pyrenees beforehand and wore specially made shoes recommended to him by English climbers. El Cainejo meanwhile not only acted as guide, he scaled the entire wall barefoot.

We’ll be passing directly below the Naranjo de Bulnes around the halfway point (bottom right hand corner of the photo).