Asturias

Southern Europe in summer? As a motorcyclist, I'd written it off years ago. Too crowded, too hot. More than once I'd found myself crawling through scorching heat on an overloaded tourist road, ticking off another landmark I'd been told I simply had to see. Surrounded by the clichés of over-tourism, the solitude I craved was nowhere to be found. So where do you go to find it? And a mild summer while you're at it? The answer, it turned out, was Asturias.