Picos de Europa Lakes of Covadonga
— two glacial lakes the cloud lifts off slowly.
Not only on a wall.
Picos de Europa Lakes of Covadonga, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Two glacial lakes hold a high meadow above the Sanctuary of Covadonga: Enol, the deeper one, and Ercina, shallow and the colour of slate. Cattle and Asturian ponies graze the slopes. Most of the year a thin cloud sits over the water in the morning and lifts by ten. The road up climbs sixteen kilometres of switchbacks from the basilica below.
The place, in three passes.
The lakes of Covadonga lie in the Western Massif of the Picos de Europa, in the Asturian municipality of Cangas de Onís, around 1,070 metres for Lago Enol and 1,108 metres for Lago Ercina. They sit inside the Parque Nacional de los Picos de Europa, declared in 1918 as Parque Nacional de la Montaña de Covadonga — the first national park in Spain. The reserve was expanded in 1995 to its current 67,455 hectares across Asturias, Cantabria, and Castile-León.
Both lakes are glacial in origin, scooped out of limestone karst at the end of the last ice age and held by morainic dams. Enol covers about 12.2 hectares and reaches 23 metres deep; Ercina is broader at 13.3 hectares but only around three metres deep, fed by snowmelt and seasonal springs. Water leaves Ercina through underground sinkholes typical of karst country, surfacing again far down the valley to feed the Río Güeña, which joins the Sella at Cangas de Onís.
Between Easter and mid-October, and on summer weekends, private cars are barred from the lakes road; access is by shuttle bus from Cangas de Onís or El Repelao for around nine euros return. The road itself is sixteen kilometres of tight switchbacks climbing from the Sanctuary of Covadonga, a Marian shrine rebuilt in the 1880s on the site of Pelayo's eighth-century victory over the Umayyads. The Pedro Pidal viewpoint between the lakes offers the standard photograph; the Vega de Enol meadow is the place to walk.
