Comillas to Santillana Del Mar

The Cantabrian regional government has done a good job of keeping pilgrims off the busy roads, but unfortunately, their solution has been to send us on long loops on country roads or to pave paths. So today, out of the 24 km I walked, I’ll bet that at least 22 were on pavement.

It was not an unpleasant walk, and I think there were about five or six moderate ascents, followed by the same number of descents. It was very pleasant, with occasional glimpses of the far away ocean, and lots of little pueblos. I have done most of my singing on this Camino in connection with trying to get cows and bulls to move away from me. But today I just couldn’t stop singing Enter, rejoice and come in! With a few camino modifications to the lyrics of course!

When I was about 2 km away from Santillana, I looked at my watch and saw it was about noon. That meant that I could arrive in time to visit the colegiata and one of Spain’s most beautiful and best preserved Romanesque cloisters. I was in the cloister by 12:30, and even though it closed at 1:00, the very nice man at the desk let several of us stay until about 1:20. Wonderful.

Santillana has gobs of hotels, and I was right to assume that this early in the season most were open, but probably none were full. So I picked out an old stone house, turns out it was built in the 16th century by the first Marqués of Santillana. Very nice, with a beautiful little garden out back where I am having an Agua con gas as I write this.

I decided to go up to visit the caves of Altamira this time. I have been there twice before, once in the 70s when I actually went into the real cave, and once in the 90s with my family when we went into the “reproduction cave.” I decided that I would rather walk up there than spend a couple of hours walking up and down Santillana’s two historic streets, which are, unfortunately, filled with souvenir shops.

The “reproduction cave” is apparently done to the highest standards, and the way it is set up is really informative and attention-grabbing. Our guide (small group of 10) was excellent. From a church and cloister that are a little less than 1000 years old to a cave that has paintings ranging in age from 15,000 years old to more than 30,000 years old. That is just incomprehensible to me.

Dinner at a nice tapas place, La Tienda. And then I just couldn’t resist taking another walk around town, with all the shops closed and the streets lit up. It was really beautiful.Read more