The wife and I took the ferry to Santander last September, got in at 17.30 and were off by 18.00.
We had the first night booked in a Parador in Fuente De, which is about 10km inland from Potes, which again is on the road to Riano. It's at the base of the cable car that takes you up the mountain where there's plenty of walks, views and a decent cafe. Queues can be long in high season. Think it took us about 90 minutes to get there although can't remember if that included a coffee stop on the way. Potes is nice to walk around and there's plenty of places to stay and eat. They're well used to tourists on bikes, in fact pretty much the whole of Spain welcomes bikes of all descriptions.
There's only one other restaurant at Fuente De so you'll find it a bit expensive to eat as they have a captive audience but the Parador is nice if you want to experience one and there's plenty of under cover parking.
The route outlined previously down to Riano and back up to Cangas De Onis is indeed awesome, if a little slow in places. The other route over the pass from Potes down to Riano is faster and absolutely mind blowing, especially if you can find it relatively traffic free. We went on further west from Cangas all the way across to A Coruna on the west coast and the further west you go, the less traffic there is.
Going again in September and heading further into northern Portugal. You'll probably find there's someone in every bar or restaurant that speaks a couple of words of English if you're stuck but you can always rely on hand signals to describe what you want!
We had the first night booked in a Parador in Fuente De, which is about 10km inland from Potes, which again is on the road to Riano. It's at the base of the cable car that takes you up the mountain where there's plenty of walks, views and a decent cafe. Queues can be long in high season. Think it took us about 90 minutes to get there although can't remember if that included a coffee stop on the way. Potes is nice to walk around and there's plenty of places to stay and eat. They're well used to tourists on bikes, in fact pretty much the whole of Spain welcomes bikes of all descriptions.
There's only one other restaurant at Fuente De so you'll find it a bit expensive to eat as they have a captive audience but the Parador is nice if you want to experience one and there's plenty of under cover parking.
The route outlined previously down to Riano and back up to Cangas De Onis is indeed awesome, if a little slow in places. The other route over the pass from Potes down to Riano is faster and absolutely mind blowing, especially if you can find it relatively traffic free. We went on further west from Cangas all the way across to A Coruna on the west coast and the further west you go, the less traffic there is.
Going again in September and heading further into northern Portugal. You'll probably find there's someone in every bar or restaurant that speaks a couple of words of English if you're stuck but you can always rely on hand signals to describe what you want!