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There is a smaller kind and a larger more standard variety (bushy white tails) and these will graze where they find pasture, or move around the woods. Wild boar are plentiful, and hunting for these and the deer are common. Some areas have been designated ‘hunting zones’, as well as the ‘fishing zones’. This is a trout and salmon
area; the coast is of course known for the variety and abundance of marine life. In the higher mountains there are bear and wolves; so far I have stuck more to the
‘in-between’ places, away from the coast and yet below the heights. Around us are lower yet impressive mountains. These provide a plethora of ways to go, from hilly countryside to higher climbs, where the trees thin out and goats pasture. The autochthonous breed of cow (usually for meat) is the ‘Asturian of the Mountains’ which half resembles a goat in it’s lanky toughness, narrow head with goatish horns, and the ability to scramble over rocky mountain-sides with the best. These days, with a declining human population, and a vanishing tradition of cowherding, people are putting out a variety of grazing animals to pasture, if only to keep the grass down and maintain the fields. Sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, whatever will eat the prairie- we know a family that keeps ostriches!
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One of the best routes to take in this particular area is called Fuensanta, which takes its name from the springs found there. The waters are bottled and sold throughout Europe, and the natural beauty and freshness of the place tells why. Here is a gorge which rises steeply into the mountains, reaching a series of waterfalls which are the source for all this wetness. Fill your bottles up at the beginning of the path (there is a public fountain) and walk the loop, following the rise of the land to the falls and then descending again. Make sure you have plenty of empty bottles in the car so you can fill them up for drinking at home.
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Yes, we live in Middle-Earth. I know this to be true when on an early morning the mist hangs over the valleys and dales between hills, when the rolling fields rise to meet the looming mountains at sunset, when the stars shine clear and bright in the night-sky. The view from a highpoint shows the landscape dotted with houses, fields, grazing animals, gardens, fruit trees; with wooded slopes of mountains surrounding the valleys of hills. There is land to plow and woods to walk and waters to swim. The sea is less than an hour away from the ski-slopes on high mountains, whose peaks are snowy most of the year and tower in the distance. This land is indeed a Natural Paradise.
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