Ruta del Alba: How Long It Takes, and the Easy Trails in Redes

The Ruta del Alba, in Redes Natural Park, leaves from Soto de Agues and is about seven kilometres one way, around fourteen there and back, with low difficulty: the hard part is the distance, not the terrain. The short route is the Camín del Rebollal, from Campiellos: about seven hundred metres, almost flat, a long half hour there and back.

In Redes almost everyone starts with the Ruta del Alba, and some turn back halfway because nobody warned them it's about fourteen kilometres there and back. Ranking the trails by the time and effort they actually take, parking problem included, is more useful than another list of pretty photos. Here's what fits in half an hour, what takes up a long morning, and what eats the whole day.

Where exactly you are when you're in Redes

Redes Natural Park covers two concejos entirely, Caso and Sobrescobio, in the central-eastern stretch of the Cantabrian Mountains. That's around 37,800 hectares, almost 378 square kilometres, most of it in Caso, which is a huge, very empty concejo. It was declared a natural park in 1996 and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2001. None of this is administrative decoration: it explains why there are so few services inside the park, and why the tracks and paths run where they do, which is usually where they've run for centuries.

Geographically, Redes is where the Nalón valley ends. You come up the AS-17 from the lower valley, past Pola de Laviana, and from there the valley narrows, the Tanes and Rioseco reservoirs appear, and the landscape switches, all at once: from mining valley to mountain valley in twenty minutes by car. Rioseco is the main town of Sobrescobio and Campo de Caso of Caso; the latter has the park's visitor centre, the sensible place to ask about the real state of a trail before setting out on it.

That last point matters more than it sounds. Redes gets landslides fairly often, and some stretches marked on the information panels have been impassable for years. Signage on the ground doesn't always keep pace with the mountain, and some of the maps circulating online show loop routes that can't actually be closed today.

The problem isn't the trail, it's where you leave the car

The Ruta del Alba starts in Soto de Agues, a village of hórreos (the traditional raised granary on stone posts) at the end of a side road. Only residents can drive through the village streets, so the car has to go in the public car park at the entrance, next to the trail's information panel. It's free, year-round, but limited, and that's the problem: in August, on weekends and on long weekends it fills up early, and from mid-morning on people start leaving cars along the access road's verges, which is narrow and full of bends.

The practical rule everyone who's been more than once repeats is simple: arrive early and you'll park without any drama, even in high season; arrive mid-morning and you're on your own. Nobody publishes a magic hour, but there is a clear pattern — the car park fills and empties in step with the early risers. Going on a weekday changes the experience completely, not just for parking but for the noise: a narrow gorge amplifies the conversations of whoever's walking ahead of you.

There's a car-free alternative. A regular bus line runs between Pola de Laviana and Soto de Agues, operated by a local company, with only a few departures a day; check the current timetable before relying on it, since a service like that won't forgive a delay on the way back. A taxi from Pola de Laviana or Rioseco is the other reasonable option if there are two or more of you and you'd rather skip the whole problem. For the Tabayón, in Tarna, the situation is similar on a smaller scale: a handful of spaces by the church of San Pedro and little else, so getting there early is again the answer.

Half an hour: the Camín del Rebollal, from Campiellos

It has the best view-to-effort ratio in the park and almost nobody mentions it. The Camín del Rebollal starts at the top of the hamlet of Campiellos, in Sobrescobio, and runs about seven hundred metres along an almost flat path that skirts the hillside through a small wood of chestnut and oak. It's an accessible trail, with a wooden handrail the whole way and practically no elevation change, so there and back comes to around a kilometre and a half, done in a long half hour, or an hour if you stop to look, which is the point.

It ends at the Campiellos viewpoint, with information panels that include braille text. From there you can see much of the concejo: Rioseco, La Polina, Villamoréi and Soto de Agues below, the Tanes and Rioseco reservoir system, and, opposite, the line of peaks with La Escrita, El Retriñón and Cuyargayos. It's literally the map of the area explained from above, and doing it on day one saves half a day of geographic confusion.

If you're with small children, older relatives, or a wheelchair, this is the trail. And if you're in a hurry with only an hour free before lunch, it's this one too. It's not a consolation prize: the view from the lookout is one of the park's best, and it costs almost nothing to get.

A long morning: the Tabayón del Mongayu, which isn't a short stroll

There's an idea going around that the Tabayón del Mongayu waterfall is a short outing. It isn't. The trail leaves the village of Tarna, in Caso, at around 996 metres of altitude, and the waterfall sits above 1,200 metres. Depending on the measurement and the variant taken, the full route runs between ten and eleven and a half kilometres, with over five hundred metres of accumulated elevation gain, and serious guides put it at three to five hours. It's a low-to-moderate difficulty route, with no technical sections, but it's a whole morning, not a walk before vermouth.

The Tabayón has been a Natural Monument since 2003, a drop of around sixty metres formed by the Mongayo stream at the base of a glacial cirque. The path climbs first along a track, crosses high beech and birch woods, and reaches the foot of the waterfall over a rocky stretch. You're in brown bear and Cantabrian capercaillie territory, two threatened species, so staying on the path and keeping the noise down here isn't just a line from a leaflet.

Two specific warnings. First: the loop shown on the signage can't reliably be closed, because the return along the river path has been damaged by rockfalls for a while now; the sensible move is to go back the way you came. Second: there's a variant to the centuries-old oaks of Llanu del Toru that adds about two kilometres each way and a fair amount of climbing. It's beautiful, and entirely skippable if the morning's running tight.

The full day: the Ruta del Alba, PR AS-62

The Ruta del Alba leaves from Soto de Agues's old wash house and follows the Alba river upstream along a path once used by shepherds and muleteers. It's about seven kilometres one way, so around fourteen there and back, and that's the number to take in before you set off. The elevation gain is modest and spread out: figures in circulation range from 350 to over 600 metres accumulated depending on where you set the endpoint, and walking it feels like a gentle, steady climb. Low difficulty, no exposed sections or anything technical, and a very well-marked path. The hard part here is the distance, not the terrain.

The route crosses the Foces de Llaímo, a gorge with vertical walls of quartzite and limestone, and stone bridges like the Pontona and the Resquiebra. Along the way you pass the remains of the Carmen mine, active for much of the 20th century. The route ends at Cruz de los Ríos, where the valley opens into meadows and beech woods and there's a small refuge with a picnic area: the obvious spot to eat before turning back.

There's one detail almost no guide mentions, and it costs you in autumn: dusk comes earlier inside the gorge. The walls eat up the light long before the sun actually sets, and a stretch that's a comfortable walk at two in the afternoon is dim light over wet rock by half past six in October. Work out your turnaround time with that in mind, not the official sunset time.

It's by far the most walked trail in Redes, and for good reason. But it's also where most people turn back halfway, precisely because they arrive convinced they're in for a ninety-minute stroll.

When you want the day properly eaten up

Beyond the Ruta del Alba there are two classics that are already a full day and should be planned as one. Brañagallones, PR AS-66, leaves from Bezanes and climbs about ten kilometres of track and path up to the braña (mountain pasture), at around 1,215 metres, which puts the round trip near twenty kilometres and a good five hours of actual walking, not counting stops. At the two-kilometre mark you pass the Texu la Oración viewpoint, looking over Bezanes and the upper Nalón basin, and the final stretch goes through the Crestón tunnel, cut into the rock. It's a steady, no-surprises climb, and that's exactly what's deceptive about it: it wears you down by accumulation.

The other is the Ruta de los Arrudos, PR AS-61, from Caleao. The full official route, Caleao–La Infiesta, runs to twenty-three kilometres and around 1,200 metres of elevation gain, ending at Lago Ubales, the only accessible lake in the park. Almost nobody does the whole thing: the usual plan is to go in through the Desfiladero de los Arrudos, enjoy the most spectacular section, and turn back when it's time. That's perfectly legitimate, as long as it's decided before you set off, not at three in the afternoon with your legs already done.

If a trail isn't listed here, it's not because it doesn't exist, but because we'd rather not throw out names without a checked distance, elevation gain and starting point. Redes has dozens more paths, many unmarked, and some that only make sense with someone who knows the ground. That's what the Campo de Caso visitor centre is for.

Three things that actually matter, and almost nobody says

The first is a GPX track downloaded to your phone, with the map set to offline mode. Fog in Redes isn't a winter anecdote: it shows up in any season, within minutes, especially in the upper part of Caso, and once it rolls into a beech wood, any sense of direction disappears completely. Phone signal inside the park is patchy, so counting on loading the map on the fly is a bad bet. Download it the night before, on wifi.

The second is food and water. None of these routes has services along the way. There's no bar halfway through the Alba gorge, no reliable spring on the way up to the Tabayón, and nothing in Brañagallones that depends on someone having opened up that day. Carrying enough water and something solid isn't over-preparing, it's the condition for not cutting the route short from hunger. Grippy-soled footwear isn't optional either: wet limestone in a gorge slips in a very particular way.

The third is the one that causes the most frustrated turnarounds: work out the way back, not just the way out. When a guide says seven kilometres, check whether that's one way or total, because almost all these routes are out-and-back. An honest calculation runs backwards: fix the time you want to be back at the car, subtract the return time, subtract the lunch stop, and what's left is your turnaround deadline, whether you've reached the end or not. The waterfall, the braña or the refuge will still be there next year.

Redes is a short drive from the Nalón valley, up the AS-17. That's the unglamorous but decisive advantage of sleeping in the valley instead of coming from Oviedo or the coast: you can leave early without leaving early hurting, and be parked in Soto de Agues, Campiellos or Tarna before the parking question is even a question.