Well, I had a bit of a disaster this morning. 

I got up early as usual, trying not to make too much noise as Mike likes to sleep in. As I was making my AeroPress coffee, I hadn’t screwed the base on properly, so when I pressed it down, coffee started spilling onto the bench. Did I take that as a sign that something might be wrong? No. I decided to push down harder.

Big mistake.

The next minute, hot coffee was squirting all over the bench, all over me, and all over the van. I’d made such a mess with coffee and grinds everywhere. And all the swearing woke Mike up.

He tried to salvage my coffee, but there were far too many grinds in it, and somehow he was making even more mess. In the end, we gave up and made a fresh one.

Thankfully, the rest of the day was much less chaotic.

It was a lovely cool morning, so we hung around camp until midday before heading off. The drive over the mountains towards Picos de Europa was absolutely stunning. We’d been told it’s a touristy area, so we were prepared for lots of traffic and people. But apart from a few motorbikes, the roads were surprisingly quiet. We stopped at a lookout and could see snow-capped mountains in the distance, which was pretty impressive.

We continued on to Potes, the main town in the Picos (Peaks). We needed fuel, and surprisingly, it was even cheaper here. The town itself was fairly busy, with more people than we’d seen in ages and a few tourist shops, but nothing over the top like I was expecting.

Then we headed higher into the mountains again, and this drive was incredible. Even though it’s a main road, it was still pretty narrow in places, and I found myself holding my breath around some of the corners.

We stopped at the San Glorio summit, 1,600 metres above sea level, where a couple of motorhomes were already parked up. One look at the views and we decided it was a gorgeous spot to spend the night.

Best of all, it was so much cooler.