5/08/18 – 7/08/18 – Gijon, Asturias Region
Playa El Rinconin is another doggie beach about 2 miles from the city of Gijon, which was our next destination. Like A’Coruna, on arrival to the free car/camper area (photo below) it was rammed and we had to park on a residential street for several hours until we got a space. Sometimes this feels like a pain in the arse because you just want to get settled. Fortunately a space appeared once most of the locals went home around 8pm, and we quickly got settled in for a couple of nights stay.(GPS 43.546927,-5.6373862,453)
We checked the beach out which was quite a small cove, but it wasn’t that pleasing to Marley’s taste due to him not being able to run on the pebbles. We couldn’t either, so we didn’t actually spend much time on it. We were actually more pleasantly surprised and drawn to the well maintained park called Parque De El Rinconin. The grass was so green and there were neat rows of very high palm trees around it. It was literally next to the car park we were staying in and adjacent to the beach. Bonus!
The atmosphere at the park was great and it felt like it was their grassy beach. Locals enjoyed themselves by sunbathing including some topless, having picnics galore with whole sets of fold out tables and chairs. As there were loads of trees, there was plenty of shade for Marley whilst we enjoyed a spot of sunbathing ourselves. Not surprisingly we spent quite a bit of time here. I wish we took more photos!
On our last day we rode along the Paseo De Rosario Acuna, the promenade that runs the stretch of the beach into Gijon. The cycling tracks are pretty decent and we felt safe riding along with Marley. Gijon appears to be a big city with lots of modern commercial shops and lots of green areas. We headed straight to the historical centre as this is more interesting to us. Our first stop was at the monument Elogio Del Horizonte, which sits high upon the old naval defense of Gijon where you can get great views across the ocean and city, It was definitely worth the short hike up to see it and the gusty winds once up there! The Gijon folk apparently call it King Kong’s WC and you can see why.
The historical centre is really quite small so it took us no longer than an hour to walk around. The weather was quite grey when we were there so I don’t think the photos do it much justice and also it was quite early so not many people around. Only as we were leaving, the cafes and restaurants started opening up, and you could feel the lunch time buzz beginning.
We enjoyed our visit to Gijon and how friendly the people were. It was an opportunity for us to relax, but this meant we didn’t do that much,which has resulted in a shorter blog post this time.
