Solo Palacio

On our way to Solo Palacio, Mr Smith and I have an unexpected encounter. Our white SUV is still new enough that a smattering of windscreen bugs is met with a tense sigh and a rigorous squeegee, so neither of us is prepared for turning a corner and ending up in herd of cows. Momentarily, the stocky bouncers plod to the verges to permit entrance to a larger relative, then swarm around us as if we’re the beef in the Wellington. We’ve all met characters on holiday who’ve become a bit too over-familiar, but this is next-level clingy. The car’s collision sensors are pinging like we’re belted inside a Vegas slot machine.

With our reversing camera full of horns, it feels more like a scene from an A&E documentary than a watercolour illustration on a milk carton. A little calf trots in front of the bonnet, which is cute but even more stressful than explaining how you like your steak cooked. And then nature calls for one of the cows — an audience clearly not affecting them the way it does humans — followed by some aggressive tail-flicking to really send that exit matter airborne.

‘I’m going to have to wash the whole car,’ exclaims Mr Smith, incredulous at how messy getting to a hotel could become. Meanwhile, I’m having a flashback to the driving lesson when I was pootling around a housing estate and came nose-to-nostril with a bull that had escaped from a nearby field. We’re both relieved when the world’s least bothered cowhand strolls up to steer the pack safely away from this pair of clueless urbanites.

‘Rural’ may be a subjective concept, but when the village sign cites a population of 26 and the most obnoxiously showy neighbour is a snow-capped mountain, I don’t think the jury would need much deliberation time. So it’s a surprise (did you hear relief?) to reach Solo Palacio and find one entire wall of 15th-century stonework is now a cocktail bar.

Two flutes of Asturian cider — sweet, frothy and unfathomably delicate compared to a pint chugged back in a British beer garden — later, we sink into a flounce of a white linen sofa, in front of a nervous-system-unknotting log fire, and drink it all in. The architecture of the lobby-slash-dining-room exercises a restraint that probably doesn’t always apply to that liquor wall. A polished-concrete floor houses Danish-looking dining chairs, and wooden beams have the rugged imperfection that comes from centuries of hands having touched their grain. As a wise cow insinuated to me earlier, in this part of the world you can take your modern design and poop all over it.

It’s in this vein that Solo Palacio has an almost anti-hotel feeling. For one, you’re very much left to your own devices. On that note, yes, there’s WiFi, and cocktails made in collaboration with an award-winning Asturian bar can be ordered via WhatsApp. The Gin Piparra — infused with the throat-hit of the namesake skinny green Basque pepper — is the new Picante.

Around the grounds, suites are set inside stone buildings. Many are detached, with a full countryside-charm assault: thigh-thick beams and pillars, arched doorways, ancient crests, even a heart-shape forged into the ironwork of a window. One of the most charming is a miniature wood-sided dwelling on stilts. These structures were built in northern Spain from the 16th century onwards as granaries, the height elevating corn and grain from notoriously damp weather. To everyone’s delight, it was announced during my stay that they had been granted cultural heritage status to safeguard their future preservation.

We're booked into one of two dog-friendly Solo Lofts, because the hound is in tow with these Smiths. I get the day’s second fright of my life seeing another crisp white linen sofa. As I improvise a cover out of one of our fluorescent green beach towels, I imagine Solo Palacio’s interior designer wincing at my inaesthetic addition.

Protection from paws aside, interiors are all about restoration rather than intervention. Decor is intentionally minimal so the fabric of the building can sing. In the living room, centuries-old cooking stoves are still embedded in one wall. In the bathroom, a weighty yet wonky original door reveals a freestanding tub, concrete sinks and a waterfall shower carved into rock. There’s not much in the way of cosmetics (bring shampoo and conditioner), nor will you find a TV. Yet the trappings that matter are here: toasty underfloor heating to dry your hiking boots; a microwave (not visible, of course) that fills the hole when the local food scene works (or doesn’t) to its own schedule.

The most intoxicating part doesn’t even have an alcohol component. It’s the countryside, the real host here. Windows are frames on canvases of lush greenery. Beyond the infinity pool, the mountaintops are gilded in sunlight then swaddled in mist. One minute the sky is as blue as a baby boy’s gender reveal, then it’s raining, then the stars are coming through like torchlight in a pine forest.

The wildness is mesmerising, all-encompassing and hypnotic. It may even open its bowel on your car. But in Asturias, as in the social-media meme, this is nature’s world and you’re just living it.