The sport in Asturias

Western route by El Transcantábrico

Jesús Castañón Rodríguez

The 25th of November in 2004, an active tourism cruise started on board a vintage train, this cruise was organized by the railway company FEVE.

A journey along the Costa Verde in the company of sportsmen passengers by a train with literary origins. Between the Eo and Deva estuaries, 280 kilometres on the banks of the Bay of Biscay delimited the way through rocky, steep lands and irregular contours, estuaries, fishing ports, lonely coves, beaches… A sea and mountain natural paradise, suitable for lovers of peace, emotion and nostalgia.

A leap to different ages
This rail cruise allowed a suggestive railway and sport journey to space and time. It favoured the industrial evocations of five railway lines: Cantábrico (between Llanes and Unquera), Económicos (from Oviedo to Llanes), Ferrol-Gijón (on the section Ribadeo-Pravia), Langreo (from El Berrón to Gijón) and Vasco-Asturiano (between Trubia and Pravia). It evoked the evolution of the sports tastes at the beginning of the 20th century with some preferences: chess, skittles, cycling, football and canoeing, and even the resultant motor races.

It showed a pleasant architecture to learn to recognize the railway on a path, the bridge-track, the bridge of planks to save streams and rushes, the bridge to cross rivers, the viaduct with thin arches to cross valleys and depressions… An architecture to reach the romantic view of a luxurious train which flirts with the landscape ups and downs and the sides of the mountains, which was like a lighthouse moving at dusk… To join the banks of the cultural tourism with the opportunity for the physical activity: long journeys by car, by foot or by BTT , green tracks, trekking, hunting, fishing, touring by bicycle, skiing or golf. To understand the sportsmen's constructive behaviour when they win through difficulties and go farther and farther, higher and higher and stronger.

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Traducción: María Elena Martín Pérez

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