THE NORTH ROAD FROM SANTANDER TO SANTILLANA DEL MAR
Santander is an ideal city to spend a few days off before continuing on foot towards Galicia. Its small size and the reduced nature of its historic center make it perfectly visitable in one day, although for express its flavor it is worth approaching the beaches of the municipality.
Matalenas, a hidden cove between Capes Minor and Major, is still the favorite sandbank of the Santanderians of a lifetime. If you want to get to know a native sport, stroll along the Camello and Primera del Sardinero beaches, where in the mornings players and players of Pallas who try to keep the ball in the air hitting hard with their wooden rackets.
To eat, go to the lollipop in search of its famous squid rings, famous among the locals. And for seafood dishes, the route is the cove of the ling , where by the sea is Tin Restaurant, and ask for prawns: you will lick your fingers with these prawns that are eaten as if they were pipes.
Aerial view of Mataleñas beach, Santander.
The Camino del Norte leaves Santander crossing industrial estates and urbanized land until you reach the river Pas to cross it through the medieval bridge of Oruña. Nor are the landscapes that accompany us particularly attractive. until we leave behind the river Saja, in Viveda.
There stands, abandoned to its fate, the house-tower of the Calderón de la Barca family , family of the famous playwright, whose lineage made their fortune as boatmen of the Saja who transported pilgrims and travelers like Saint Francis of Assisi, who passed through these parts.
From Viveda will begin the usual Cantabrian landscape of mowed meadows with care, villages with red roofs and hills with churches and bell towers. . The growing beauty of the path increases as we approach Santillana del Mar , the “village of the Three Lies”, one of the most picturesque and ancient that we will find on our route to Santiago.
It preserves a beautiful Romanesque collegiate church, baroque palaces and medieval towers, as well as an urban fabric frozen in time. Modernity never reached Santillana, nor did it affect the glasses of fresh milk served with sobaos and quesada in quevedo house.
Comillas (Cantabria).
FROM SANTILLANA DEL MAR TO SAN VICENTE DE LA BARQUERA
After sleeping in Santillana del Mar begins one of the most beautiful sections of the Camino del Norte. The path that takes us until Quotation marks through towns anchored in time like Toñanes, with a medieval bridge that symbolizes its importance on the Camino, and that houses the impressive Molino del Bolao , a waterfall that falls directly into the Cantabrian Sea.
Several kilometers ahead is the town of Liandres, famous for its cliffs and a restaurant, The remedy, located on a cliff, in front of an old church and with a kitchen creative that respects tradition between saline winds and emerald meadows.
We will try dessert in Comillas when we order an ice cream in Regma, surely the most famous ice cream in Cantabria. Entire books have been written about the villa del Marqués : modernist cradle, first place in Spain with public lighting, headquarters of a university...
quotes and its architecture, both the curves and colors imagined by Antoni Gaudí and the sober mountain mansions, the visitor falls in love just as it captivated the Madrid and Catalan aristocrats more than a century ago. He still keeps in his character said aristocratic phlegm, which can easily be seen by looking at the holiday homes that surround the village.
From Comillas we will depart towards Unquera , on the border with Asturias, passing through the famous town of San Vicente de la Barquera. The Camino del Norte crosses the beautiful beaches of Oyambre and Meron , on their way to San Vicente, allowing pilgrims to get their feet wet in the cold waters of the Bay of Biscay.
The Picos de Europa appear in the distance, falling on the waves of the sea, pearled by fog and snow that form white crowns. They make an incomparable frame when it appears before the eyes of the traveler the King's castle of San Vicente de la Barquera, whose battlements are cut out on the peaks of the Picos, guarding the entrance to Asturias as he has always done.
FROM SAN VICENTE DE LA BARQUERA TO RIBADESELLA
Few pilgrims dispute that one of the purest stretches of the Camino del Norte, one that preserves a landscape and a nature frozen in time, is the multi-day itinerary that joins San Vicente de la Barquera and Villaviciosa, in Asturias.
The route advances close to the coast, between buffoons that splash salt water on the pilgrim and cows with cream fur that produce famous cheeses such as Vidiago and Peral.
Colombres (Asturias).
Colombres, good, Quintuels… All the peoples that await our passage in the shadow of the road have a common denominator: the Indian mansions . Built by emigrants who left for America, those who succeeded returned to their land willing to build schools and mansions with which to show their new status.
The Colombres Emigration Museum shows us the interesting story of those who abandoned a beautiful coast, but poor, in search of a fortune that very few reached. There where the pilgrim contemplates a tall house, with windows and roofs of aristocratic taste, guarded by Cuban-scented palm trees, you will know that it was the work of an Indian.
The peaks of the Sierra del Cuera , whose skirts bathe in the Cantabrian, give shelter to the walker while he leaves behind the small port of Llanes. Course to Ribadesella , they happen golden sand beaches hidden between cliffs, What torimbia , or estuaries that change their appearance when the tide rises, like Poo or the magical enclave of Niembro.
The tiny beach of Gulpiyuri is surrounded by green meadows.
This is a virgin coast full of nooks and crannies where the pilgrim could spend weeks trying to discover its secrets. The best known is undoubtedly the Gulpiyuri beach, between Llanes and Ontoria: the sea water flows behind the cliffs in the middle of a green meadow where cows graze.
But if Gulpiyuri is crowded, which is likely in summer, the secret of the locals is next to the beach of San Antolín, where the monastery stands San Antolin de Bedon . It is an abandoned construction that preserves its Romanesque trace, and whose origin dates back to the dawn of the Middle Ages as a hospice for pilgrims. San Antolín leads to Santiago, and deserves to stop at its gates, next to the estuary, to remember it.
FROM RIBADESELLA TO VILLAVICIOSA
the village of Ribadesella It is famous for its gastronomy and the landscape that surrounds it. The Sella River flows alongside the town's docks, allowing the celebration of an internationally known event: the Descent of the Sella.
In the height of summer, hundreds of professional and amateur canoeists compete to be the first to complete the itinerary between Arriondas and Ribadesella, although the most common is to stop at the numerous beach bars that offer along the river to pour some culines of cider
And to satisfy the hunger that I produced the exercise, the restaurant the textu, a steak house specializing in Asturian meats, it has long had a well-known reputation among locals and foreigners. Your grill deserves it: in the Texu we will obtain the necessary strength to continue walking.
Ribadesella.
The stage that runs between Ribadesella and Villaviciosa leaves the town of Sella through green hills until it reaches the town of Vega. Linked to the path, its stone houses flank the path until reaching the remains of a medieval bridge that crosses the small river that, inland, gives rise to to the flirty Entrepeñas Gorge.
The Camino del Norte runs along the beach of Vega, goes up to the picturesque town of Berbes, small but full of Indian mansions, and enters Caravia. The sunset that the pilgrim can contemplate when crossing the meadows that surround the beaches of Arenal de Moris and the Espasa is one of the most beautiful in the north: the Sierra del Sueve is dyed orange, and the Picu Pienzu grows in such a way with the shadows of the stretch that it seems about to jump over the Cantabrian to take a dip.
The Camino del Norte leaves the coast after crossing the Espasa, leaving behind the town of Colunga and looking for the Villaviciosa estuary through forest covered hills. The oldest road of which news has been known since the distant 9th century, is now an alternative branch to the path that It crosses the towns of Santa Mera, Villar and Selorio heading to Villaviciosa.
Worth the detour to see ancient ways of life that remain today: granaries full of corn, farms full of of dairy cows, and mowed meadows that overlook the sea.
Bowls, Asturias.
The Villaviciosa estuary is the largest estuary in Asturias, and serves as a prelude to the Galician estuaries that we will find at the end of the Camino. It is home to a varied biodiversity in which the avifauna stands out: the pilgrim will be seen flying over by egrets, spoonbills and even ospreys.
The gastronomic fauna is also varied: we can't give up Villaviciosa without eating local fish at El Cruce bar (Selorio), where they receive the fish from the nearby port of bowls , and they will recommend us to try the xulies, a rock fish very common in the Bay of Biscay that is served fried and crispy.
Villaviciosa is also famous for its cider, the region's main industry, and its cider houses offer the best of its pantries to anyone who wants to meet them.
It is worth stopping in the little town of Amandi , next to the Camino del Norte, and satiate the appetite in Curtain House, although afterwards the siesta will be imponderable. To lie down and prepare for the next stage and There is a corner next to the old medieval bridge that crosses the Villaviciosa estuary in Amandi, in the middle of the Way: a haven where the water flows calmly in the shade of a large chestnut tree.
They just walk around here pilgrims who go to Santiago and who dream, while they digest beans and cachopos, with reaching Obradoiro Square.