Ten years ago today we were staying in the delightful town of Santillana del Mar in Northern Spain.
There is apparently an old saying that Santillana del Mar is The Town of Three Lies, since it is neither a Saint (Santo), nor flat (llana) and has no sea (Mar) as implied by the town’s name. However, the name actually derives from Santa Juliana (or Santa Illana) whose remains are in the kept in the Colegiata, a Romanesque church and former Benedictine monastery.
Posted in Cantabria, El Cid, Food, History, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Cantabria, Cantabrian Mountains, Culture, Jean Paul Satre, Life, Santillana del Mar, Spain Festival
Oviedo is only a small city, only just scraping into the top twenty largest cities in Spain and it isn’t even the largest in Asturias so it didn’t take that long to walk around the historical centre and after a brief stay we continued our drive south.
Posted in Cantabria, Cathedrals, El Cid, Europe, Food, History, Literature, Natural Environment, Postcards, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Asturias, Cantabrian Mountains, Castilla y Leon, Culture, Life, Lyon, Mountains, Oviedo
My washing line project is drawing to a close, I have reached the end of the line and this is my penultimate picture.
A washing line on a balcony in Barcena Mayor in Cantabria in Northern Spain….
It is a Challenge, Feel Free to join in…
When it comes to taking pictures I like doors, statues, balconies and washing lines, Kim on the other hand likes people pictures so I thought I might share a few of them with you.
This one was taken in the Spanish village of Carmona in Cantabria…
Carmona is a delightfully quaint village with tiny cobbled streets with wild flower verges and where sunlight spilled into the dark corners of the workshops where traditional wood carvers were busy making customary products of cattle yokes, sandals, clogs, canes, and cutlery which, I am told, are distinctive to rural Cantabria.
I say that in a slightly cynical way because I got the impression that there isn’t really a great deal of tradition here and that whilst a man was busy whittling wood in an open barn for the benefit of the tourists there was probably a factory somewhere full of modern drills and lathes where the products for sale were being produced for sale to the coach loads of visitors who visit daily.
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I am sharing with you some of my favourite places in Spain; I started with Santillana del Mar in Cantabria and close by are the mountain villages of Bárcena Mayor and Carmona.
After an hour or so we left the main road and took a minor route into the mountains where the fields became smaller, the grass became greener and the sky seemed a great deal closer as we drove past verges of wild flowers sheltering under the dry stone walls, soaring buzzards and occasional herds of the horses of Cantabria as we climbed high into the clouds, way above the snow line with strips of ice clinging defiantly to the crevices where the sun didn’t reach.
Bárcena Mayor is said to be the oldest town in Cantabria and was declared a historic-artistic site in 1979. Because of this designation it is now one of the most visited places in Cantabria as tour buses fill the road and the edge of town car park but it was quiet enough today and we walked through the pretty medieval stone streets and houses with wooden balconies and washing lines in a hanging mist which added to the character and the charm of the place.
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“Le plus joli village d’Espagne” Jean Paul Sartre
Santillana del Mar is a most picturesque town and often appears in any top ten of best villages in Spain along with Cudillero, Almagro, Ronda, Trujillo and Alcala de Henares. This may of course have something to do with the fact that the French writer, philosopher and all-round clever dick, Jean Paul Sartre declared it to be the prettiest village in Spain in 1938, although I am not absolutely sure just how much of Spain he visited and just what he was comparing it with or how he came to this rather sweeping judgement. Perhaps it was just a lucky guess!
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Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, Food, History, Hotels, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Cantabria, Cantabrian Mountains, Culture, Life, Santillana del Mar, Spain, Spain Festival
Not long after leaving Burgos and as we travelled north the landscape began to change. Only gradually at first and then more rapidly as we approached the snow capped Cantabrian Mountains.
The endless brown prairies of Castilla y León started to slowly give way to enclosed green fields of Cantabria and now there were ridges and escarpments each one playing host to a clutch of wind turbines. There was livestock in the fields as we began to climb, gently at first and then more dramatically into the mountains.
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Posted in Cantabria, Europe, History, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Bárcena Mayor, Burgos, Cantabria, Cantabrian Mountains, Carmona, Castilla y Leon, Santillana del Mar
Leaving Oviedo was very straight forward as we made our way out of the city and towards the Autovia that would take us almost directly south – only almost directly because first we had to pass through the mountains, or more specifically the Montes de León which are a western section of the Cantabrian mountains that form a natural geographical border between Asturias and Castilla y León.
Posted in Cantabria, Cathedrals, El Cid, Europe, Galicia, History, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel
Tagged Asturias, Cantabrian Mountains, Castilla y Leon, Culture, Life, Lyon, Mountains, Oviedo
Have Bag, Will Travel 