Ribadesella

Ribadesella is a small market town on the Costa Verde built around the estuary of the River Sella. It's most famous in Asturias, and probably the rest of Spain for all I know, for the competitive descent of the river by canoe every August; a time when the town becomes packed with locals and tourists alike and a festive atmosphere takes control of the town.

We'd visited the town once before, last year while we were camping further east on the coast, to visit the impressive Cueva de Tito Bustillo: a system of caves housing paleolithic paintings named after the caver who discovered them. Following our subterranean adventures we'd then had a walk around the town centre and along the beach in somewhat windy and cloudy weather, decided that Ribadesella was a nice enough town, and returned to our campsite.

After our second visit to the town during this year's summer holiday at Vega, Ribadesella has gone up in my estimation. The historic centre of this market town is full of gorgeous old buildings and the beach is lined with colourful villas that I would love to explore. Admittedly, we visited out of season - Ribadesella is one of the main resorts along this stretch of coast and the outskirts of town are filled with vile holiday flats, but at the beginning of September I found the town to be friendly, unpretentious and rather beautiful. It doesn't die come September like so many holiday towns, but rather it seemed that the locals reclaim it and life goes on as normal until the tourists hit the town the following season.

View from the car park - low tide in the estuary

The beach at Ribadesella

Somebody let me at them! Wonderful, wonderful buildings.

Wednesday is market day in Ribadesella, as we were to discover. The market stalls included the traditional as well as the more modern, imported-from-Asia, items unfortunately found in most small-towns around here nowadays.

Cheese stall selling locally made produce

Matt bought a smoked cheese, made in Llanes - the next large town along the coast to the east, and declared it delicious upon tasting.

Even had it not been market day, I still would've enjoyed our wander around the town. I must've been too busy trying to keep warm in the cold wind during my previous vist as this time all sorts of decorative gems caught my eye:

One in a series of tiled murals along the esturary walk, showing scenes in the history of Ribadesella.

Painted tiles on a gift shop facade

How to make posting a letter more fun

After walking around the town we made our way up the hill to the east of the beach, overlooking the beach and town.

We then made our way back down to the town for lunch. On the way we happened across a very handsome and friendly gentleman and I stopped to flirt for a while.

Even Matt was tempted to take him home. But when he jumped down as we were leaving, lay down on the sunny path and happily started to clean himself, without giving us a second glance, we decided that he mustn't have a bad life where he was and decided to leave him in Ribadesella.

A splendid three-course lunch followed my little flirtation. As veggie options do not abound in Asturias, I normally hate going out for lunch. However, we found a wonderful old tavern that was willing to do me a salad and egg and chips - my usual lunchtime fare - and I was very impressed by the multi-ingredient salad that came to begin with and also with the main course that followed: home-made chips and egg fried so that the yolk was just starting to turn solid around the edges but was still runny in the centre - perfection. After many, many lunches involving the same dishes, I am now an expert critic and this was the best lunch I've had since I've been here. Matt praised his seafood paella, followed by an equally tasty grilled sea bass (apparently). The set menu also included a bottle of red wine, water and desert. Matt opted for the creme caramel (a Spanish staple, but this was a posh home-made version) and I had blackcurrant cheesecake, which is one of my all-time favourites. Deserts are normally the weakest point of Spanish lunchtime menus, but on this occasion they were more than up to scratch.

After another brief wander around the town to walk lunch down, we headed sleepily back to the car with the idea of having a siesta when we returned to the tent.

Boat graveyard in the Sella esturary

I carried on snapping until the last minute, giving Ribadesella the accolade of favourite town on the Asturian coast while I did.