Walking in the Cordillera Cantabrica - Northern Spain

This mountaineering guidebook describes 60 routes spread around Spain's Cordillera Cantabrica range. Based on selected valley bases with easy access. All the routes are circular and can be done in a day, whilst in difficulty they vary from straightforward, half-day outings to strenuous, full-day ascents.

The mountain ranges covered by this guide are not the Alps, but they do offer high mountain terrain, frequently well above the tree-line and often trackless once the woods and meadows have been left behind. This is not, therefore, a guide for those looking for a pleasant stroll to while away the afternoon. In fact, the majority of the walks here will take between 5 and 8 hours to complete and will involve anything between 500m and 1500m of height gain, whilst the summits undertaken almost all stand between 1300m and 2500m in height.

The route descriptions assume readers can use a compass, and can read both maps and mountain terrain. Thus, although the guide is as explicit as possible with directions, especially in order to take the reader through and away from villages (often the hardest piece of navigation the day will bring!), no attempt has been made to give directions foot by foot along the trail. Instead, it makes a conscious attempt to find that elusive balance between insufficient and overwhelming detail.

When to Visit

The season for mountaineering in northern Spain is almost as long as the Cordillera Cantábrica itself, and whilst the high summer has obvious attractions, there is an equal if not greater appeal about the late spring or early autumn, when extensive beech and oak woods render the approaches to the high ground a festival of colour, light and shade. From April through to the Veranillo de San Martín (a short but fairly regular period of good weather in November) these mountains will almost always offer something to satisfy visitors’ aspirations. The wettest time of the year is usually the early spring. In contrast, before the rains return in any really significant way, an Indian summer can often linger on well into October. For those proficient in ski-traverse, or simply willing to tread a little snow, it is fair to say that there is really no closed season at all.

The above not withstanding, however, it would be unwise to make over-detailed statements as to weather patterns, since the last decade has seen traditional cycles broken quite markedly. The mid-1990s saw a series of five extremely dry winters, much to the annoyance of skiers (and the expense of local farmers) but greatly to the delight of walkers, who on occasions could go out in shirt-sleeves in February. My own favourite periods for walking here are the autumn (mid-September to mid-November) and late spring/early summer (mid-May, June and early July). A great deal of the field-work for the guide was done at these times.

Using the Guide

This Introduction provides basic information about travel to the region, as well as details of accommodation, maps, timing and so on. This is followed by a section on the mountains themselves – their physical relief, geology, climate, vegetation, wildlife and protected areas. This section is necessarily brief, and wherever appropriate the route descriptions carry additional relevant information. The contributions by David Caballero, Victor Guerra, Claudia Cabrero and Teresa Farino provide specialist insight into place-names, the phenomenon of transhumance, the civil war in the Cordillera and the range’s high mountain flora, respectively.

The body of the guide is composed of the routes themselves. Taking the Cordillera Cantábrica as constituting a single range, it groups the routes into five sectors, two in the province of León, two in Asturias, and the last in Palencia. Each of these begins with an overview of the area, as well as basic information about relevant roads, bases, services, accommodation and mapping. The route descriptions themselves begin with an outline of the characteristics of the walk, followed by information about the starting point, maps, distance, total ascent, timing and difficulty. Next comes the description itself: the main landmarks and places shown on the map are highlighted in the text in bold type, as are the estimations of the time required to cover the different parts of the walk.

Each route description is accompanied by a sketch map. These are based on IGN or Adrados maps, but are not to a standard scale because of the need to fit them to the page. Their main function is to provide a visual introduction to the walk and thus facilitate the use of the IGN or Adrados maps, which should always be used in conjunction with the sketch maps. The place-names used on the sketch maps reflect those found on the recommended full map(s) for the route. In the case of the Adrados maps, this implies the use of many local spellings for places in Asturias. However, such spellings vary only slightly from their Castilian Spanish equivalents.

At the end of the guide there are appendices of useful addresses, as well as a glossary of geographical terms commonly used on Spanish maps. Knowledge of these terms will help you to comprehend what you are seeing more fully, and may even assist in route finding, as many terms describe their surroundings. There is also an appendix with precise but detailed information about emergency procedure.

Route Selection

The routes have been selected to allow easy access to a dozen or so summits from any one base, thus minimising tiring journeys by car. It has been assumed that walkers will have their own transport, and so will prefer circular walks rather than traverses, given the complex logistics the latter can create. An attempt has been made to cover the length and breadth of the Cordillera Cantábrica as evenly as possible, although more weight has been given to certain outstanding areas.

The choice of routes attempts to avoid the use of multiple IGN maps for a single walk. Ideally, a walk is covered by a single map, but where this is not possible, and especially where the walk is covered by three or four maps, the route description and sketch maps minimise the need to purchase and carry all of them. However, as mentioned above, it would be extremely unwise to head off into the hills without the full IGN or Adrados map(s) as recommended for each walk.

Selecting routes has proved to be an arduous process, and some of the walks which have been left out are just as good as those included. However, if the route descriptions, the information on the maps, or your own sense of adventure lead you to undertake a route which is not covered here, then surely the guide will have fulfilled both its immediate and its wider functions.