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The wandering starts…



The village with the garage that fixed the leak is only a few miles south of Santander in a deep valley. Once back on the road, we had a great drive into the hills to the south. As soon as possible we turned off the main road and meandered along a river valley and then turned steeply up, out of the trees and into proper hill country. In spite of a late Spring, the verges and leaves lower down are almost ‘out’ but up here the trees are bare.

There are field barns everywhere with really heavy stone skates on them. It’s all ‘hill farming’ that looks small scale. When you stop, the air is full of the sound of bells. The animals are unseen though. 

Some people wave but most stand and look. I think I would too. A mobile shop was open at a stop near a few houses and a group of oldies were chatting. We drove higher and then up a small road to get a view with our lunch.

From here you can see snow to the north east. This isn’t the Pyrenees, just the mountains behind Santander/ Bilbao.



A little further and we could see north west to the Cordillera Cantabria, of which the Picos mountains are part. Spring is definitely late over there. Had the weather forecast been a little warmer and stable, I think we might have gone for some walking, although there’s maybe too much snow.


At the top of another hill is a mirador with expansive views. It’s a tempting ‘wild camp’ but the forecast is for cooler weather and some rain in the next 24 hours so we chickened out.


We continued south, not very quickly, marvelling at the scenery and total lack of cars and people. As happened last time in Spain, we were often surprised. Rounding a corner there was a rock bridge across a valley and we realised that the road skirted it so that we could park and walk back to it along the side of a field on the top side.







We arrived at another village with its own ‘aire’, this time no barriers, just a guy who lives opposite and looks out to greet travellers. This is Villadiego, west of Burgos and the old fella gave us so much literature about the place we could have stayed for a week.
The aire has a set of water taps in hydrant style and chem and grey water drains. These sort of facilities put the UK to shame.




The old guy looks after a gaggle of geese in a pen and housing, next to the river and each evening walks them from their cage, round the corner and into the ford and back.
 





We drank an Estrella in the village square. What beautiful buildings they are.








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Mark M. said…
Looks really great; off the beaten track.
27 April 2022 at 18:30
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