Destinations
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Picos de Europa 6 – 13 June 2012
Flowers, butterflies and mountain wildlife amid stunning scenery
The Picos de Europa is a small but spectacular range of jagged limestone mountains in northern Spain. Here traditional methods of livestock farming allow wildlife to flourish alongside mankind, resulting in an incredibly diverse range of flora and fauna.
A pincushion of knife-edged ridges and pinnacles – the heritage of localised glacial activity and ongoing karstification – peaks at 2,648m (Torre Cerredo) and is split into three distinct massifs by precipitous gorges, carved out by the southernmost salmon rivers in Europe. In part a national park of 64,660 hectares, the Picos de Europa houses more than 1,500 species of plants, 70 or so mammals and 154 butterflies, such that even a brief visit in early summer will make a lasting impression.
In June, the hay meadows of the Picos de Europa are simply glorious. Acknowledged as being among the most species-rich Atlantic grasslands in the world, they teem with orchids and butterflies. Add to this the delights of alpine rock-gardens and high-level acid peat bogs, plus the diversity of woodland types in surrounding valleys – Mediterranean evergreen forests, cool humid swathes of beech and sessile oak, mixed deciduous canopies of ash, wych elm and small-leaved lime and extensive tracts of Pyrenean oak – and you have the recipe for an ideal natural history holiday.
Fuente De from Fuenfría
Photos on these Picos de Europa pages by Teresa Farino
Picos de Europa recce report, October 2011
Pasque flower Pulsatilla rubra ssp hispanica
From top of cable car
Marsh fritillary Euphydryas aurinia on common tongue orchid Serapias lingua
