Our home and your English family-run accommodation, Casa Gustavo, is a 500 year-old farmhouse now converted to a guest house. We, Lisa & Mike Stuart, have been living here, attracting people with a wide range of interests from all over the world, for the last 17 years. The original part of the house has sloping floors and ancient doors, thick stone walls and huge oak beams. We share our atmospheric home with children, cats, dogs, Barn swallows and Black redstarts among other wildlife.

There's a flower-filled courtyard with a barbecue where dinner is served on summer evenings and a dining room with large table for convivial meals in winter. Evening meals are 3 set courses of delicious food, making use of as much local and seasonal produce as possible. They could include Lydia's vegetarian lasagne, Lisa's lentils with chorizo or Mike's fish paella, all accompanied by plenty of our “extremely quaffable” house wine.

Good vegetarian meals can be cooked with prior notice. Earlier meals for children can be arranged, with high-chairs if needed.

Full board or B&B optional.

As well as providing comfortable accommodation and superb home-cooked food, we also run guided walking, trekking, scrambling, snowshoeing and ski touring holidays. We also host many birding and general nature tours and mtb holidays.

See our guided holidays listing, Picos Rock & Snow for information on our guided activity holidays.

The Picos de Europa, Cordillera Cantabrica and valleys of Liébana are home to an amazingly rich and diverse range of flower species.

More than 45 species of orchid alone have been recorded in the Picos. Between the lower meadows and high alpine pastures the opportunity for botanising is endless, partly due to the local's use of traditional methods of land management - tractors and combine harvesters being useless on small, sloping patches of ground.

Days out with a local botanist, Teresa Farino, can be arranged.

With eagles and vultures soaring the thermals, Capercaillie and Black woodpeckers lurking in the woods, Little egrets on the coast, Redstarts, Wrynecks and Eurasian nightjars around the house and Wallcreepers on the limestone peaks, the area is a birder's treasure trove.

Still home to bears and wolves and a myriad species of invertebrates, particularly butterflies, this region of Northern Spain is simply stunning.