Where there’s a will

We were woken around 4am by a monumental rainstorm; the proverbial cats and dogs came to mind except this was Spanish rain, Norte style. Slightly spooked by the implications for our forthcoming ride to Santillana del Mar, we turned over and placed our trust in our patron saint.

Which brings me to a thank you. We want you all to know how much we are enjoying your comments on our posts. They have raised many a smile, and really do keep us going day after day. It’s like travelling with a group of close friends and being able to share our travellers tales! Please keep them coming.

Back to patron saints. We now have a competition between Saint Catherine (but that didn’t end well) and Saint James, who must have had more bones than you can shake a stick at! In the interest of balancing the genders we feel we should adopt both.

And so to today. Our saints looked after us this morning as, despite the night-time torrents, the rain had stopped and the heavy grey cloud cover was showing signs of breaking up. The departure from Santander is reputed to be nerve wracking, because of the heavy traffic, and dreary, because of the monotony of the urban sprawl. However, there is an advantage to leaving around rush hour on a Monday morning…….when it’s the city’s patron saint day. The roads were all but deserted.

We made good progress and seemed to be on the very outskirts of the city in no time. It is inevitable on one of our journeys that we will encounter a road closed sign, and this Camino is no exception. Our exit to open country was barred by a closure sign but we managed to get our bikes around the barrier. After about a kilometre of cycling on pristine new road with no other users we came to the other end and a more determined fence. We were unable to work our bikes through so I decided to dismantle the fence…temporarily!

At last we were free of the city streets and a true roller coaster of a ride commenced leaving the Santander skyline behind. The verdant landscape was truly lovely and reminded us of the hills of the West Country with a backdrop of the Southern Highlands.

We seemed to be constantly crossing low ridge lines, dropping steeply into sequestered valleys only to ascend steeply up the other side. We had identified a well reviewed bike repair shop in Torrelavega, about ten kilometres from our destination, and were keen to get there before the three hour lunch closure which commences at 1pm. We decided to telephone ahead just to make sure they weren’t celebrating a patron saint’s day. Guess what, they were closed when they were supposed to be open. And we had forgone our coffee stop.

Muttering quietly we set off for Santillana but more ridges and valleys appeared and we were beginning to believe that the village was a figment of some cartographer’s imagination. Linda began to mutter, just as our daughters did in earlier days, “Are we nearly there?”. And then suddenly there we were.

The elevation profile from today’s route explains why we felt we were never making any progress. Few of the hills were very sustained but they just kept on coming. The final spike also explains why we couldn’t see Santillana until we fell into it!

Santillana del Mar, which is not on the coast, offers an extraordinarily complete medieval centre dominated by its 12th century collegiate church. Until relatively recently (i.e.within the past twenty years) cows filled the ground floors of all the local homes: these byres now house tourist gift shops. It is regarded as one of the most beautiful villages in Spain. Indeed, Jean-Paul Sartre claimed it was so.

I will leave you to come to a view from a brief selection of images from today. We fell in love with the place. Our only disappointment was that the church was closed and we were unable to explore what is clearly regarded as one of the most important churches on this Camino. It seemed perverse that such a building should not be available to the very many pilgrims passing through and spending a night in this magical place.

After finding our astonishingly lovely hotel, which was crammed with magnificent antiques, we managed a wander and a pause for some liquid refreshment. Linda expressed a quiet interest in the train timetable for Oviedo. We suspect our own personal Baedeker guide, Jan, will have it off pat!