Picos de Europa webcams
The top of the Fuente Dé cable car, Potes, the Valdeón valley and a refuge high in the central massif: the Picos de Europa, live, with the mountain weather at each.
Photos: Potes: Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Fuente Dé: Papm1949, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Posada de Valdeón: Miguel Ángel García. from Ólvega., España, CC BY 2.0 · Collado Jermoso: JConnolly74, public domain.
The mountains behind the coast
The Picos de Europa are a compact block of grey limestone peaks rising to more than 2,600 m (8,500 ft) only about 12 miles (20 km) from the Bay of Biscay. They are split into three massifs by deep river gorges, and they straddle three regions, Asturias, Cantabria and Castile and León, which is why the cameras on this page belong to two different sections of the site. The whole range is a national park: its western part became Spain's first national park in 1918, and it was enlarged to take in all three massifs in 1995.
The cameras
On the Cantabrian side, the Fuente Dé cable car climbs 753 m (2,470 ft) up a sheer wall in a single span, and a camera at the top station shows whether the summit is in sunshine or in cloud before you queue for the ride. Down the valley, Potes, the stone market town of Liébana, has cameras over its rooftops and its river, with the peaks behind. On the León side, Posada de Valdeón sits in a high green valley above Caín, where the Cares gorge walk begins, and a camera at the Collado Jermoso refuge, at 2,064 m (6,772 ft) in the central massif, looks out over a landscape that can only be reached on foot.
When to watch the Picos de Europa
Spain is one hour ahead of the UK and Ireland. The weather in the Picos changes fast: cloud from the sea often fills the valleys in the morning while the summits stand above it in sunshine, or the other way round, and it can snow on the tops from autumn to late spring. That is exactly what the cameras are for. Check the top of Fuente Dé before driving up the valley, and the refuge camera before a long walk; the mountain forecast is on each page.
Getting there from the UK
The Picos are the closest high mountains to the ferry ports of northern Spain. Potes is about 70 miles (115 km) by road from Santander, where the ferries from Portsmouth and Plymouth arrive, and Posada de Valdeón about the same from Oviedo, on the Asturian side.