We could have driven straight down to the house in a day — it’s not that far from Santander — but something about the sea air and the slightly surreal feeling of waking up in a different country made us pause. Maybe we’re getting old. Maybe it was the smell of fresh churros at the petrol station. Either way, we decided to stretch it out. A few villages. A few glasses of wine. Let the return home feel like a reward rather than a sprint.
James had been eyeing the Autovía A-8, the Cantabrian motorway, since we disembarked. He’s obsessed. Not with the driving, but the engineering. Apparently it took decades to build — 470 kilometres from Irún to Baamonde, slicing right across the northern coast, clinging to cliffs and slipping through tunnels like a Scalextric set for adults. It’s part of the grand European Route E-70, which (James announced as we passed Laredo) runs from A Coruña to Georgia — the country, not the American state. He likes to clarify.
“You could drive from Gijón to the Black Sea without ever leaving the E-road system,” he said, in the tone of someone who has Googled this at least three times. “Remarkable, really.”
Bertie, unimpressed, farted in protest.
Our first stop was Comillas, a town I’ve always loved for its eccentric architecture and beachy air. We parked just off the Pontifical University, that great hulking Gothic pile that looks like it fell out of a Bram Stoker fever dream, and wandered through cobbled streets towards El Capricho de Gaudí. Yes, that Gaudí. Before he got famous with Sagrada Família and the psychedelic lizards, he designed this mad little summer house in the hills of Cantabria — all ceramic sunflowers and curling ironwork. Bertie wasn’t allowed in, but he peed on the sign with gusto.
We stayed that night in Santillana del Mar — which, as every guidebook loves to point out, is neither holy (santa), flat (llana), nor by the sea (del mar). It is, however, beautiful. Cobbled streets, heavy stone houses with balconies full of flowers, and an eerie quiet after the day-trippers leave. We drank wine in the square and listened to a man play an accordion under a streetlamp. Bertie tried to sing along, then gave up and ate a breadstick someone dropped.
Day two took us inland briefly to Potes, nestled between the peaks of the Picos de Europa. You can feel the air change there — cooler, sharper, piney. We bought honey from a man with an eye patch (I didn’t ask), and James took fifteen photos of a Romanesque bridge. Bertie barked at a goat statue for a full minute before realising it was stone.
We avoided the bigger cities. No Bilbao this time. No Gijón. Just the smooth hum of the A-8, the odd toll booth, and the slow descent into warmer country.
James kept spotting viaducts and muttering admiration. “That’s the Unquera Viaduct,” he said at one point, as if I’d been dying to know. “One of the most complex on the entire Cantabrian corridor. Incredible span-to-weight ratio.” I nodded and passed him a boiled sweet.
If you’re curious, here’s the article he kept quoting from later over dinner: The A-8: Spain’s Cantabrian Motorway and Its Difficult Birth
By the time we pulled off near Villaviciosa for a last coffee before heading homeward proper, Bertie had accepted his fate. He splayed himself on the café floor like a fried egg, letting the locals coo at him while I tried to remember enough Spanish to ask for milk that wasn’t hot.
Tomorrow we’ll reach the house. But for now, I’m glad we meandered. Spain isn’t a country that rewards rushing. And besides, it’s good to remind yourself — sometimes the motorway is part of the story.
