The Mountains, the Sea, Caves and Of Course Food and Wine

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Written November 3, 2025, Visited October 12 – 17, 2025

We continued east and started to get into the real mountain territory. This portion of the trip was a mix of mountains and small sea town, food and caves. I’m mixing things up a bit here and not providing a chronological visit. The cities, Bilbao and San Sebastian will be grouped in another post as the mountains and little sea town visits along with the caves and “mountain food” fit for me.

The Mountains

I knew about the Pyrenees between Spain and France, but did not really know where were mountains in Spain between the northern coast of Spain and the central Iberian peninsula (nearly down to Madrid; the Cantrabrian Mountains include the Europa Picos. I love geography and but knew nothing of these mountains before this trip. These are rugged, tall (8000 ft or so, so seem tall as they are close to the coast), formed from limestone and glacial action. They run west to east from the Cantabrian region nearly to the French border.

I loved the ruggedness of these mountains. Although they are limestone and the mountains in New Mexico are volcanic, I felt very at home in them with their exposed crags among trees.

We all wanted to get into these mountains. There are several north to south canyons (with roads through the river valleys) that lead through these mountains and up into and through them. We just picked roads into the mountains, and then found view points and west to east roads once at elevation to traverse the range and explore this area. We had several days do so with other excursions interspersed. I’ll let the pictures mostly speak for themselves.

Driving through a tiny mountain village headed to a mirador I’d found on the map. Everyone was skeptical we’d find any sort of organized mirador. But we did!
A view from the Mirador de la Collada in Asturas.
The mountains are steep with lots of little valleys and tiny roads. The hills are spotted with small villages that all seemed quite prosperous.
Looking up the Deva River Valley from another view point in Cantabria.
And we did have a chance to drive up this valley as well. Spectacular!

The Sea

We were staying in a little town (Cudillero in Asturias) on the hills overlooking the steep hills to the sea. The Bay of Bisque is a big pocket bay (the entire sea) between France and Spain that can be rough and fierce. Beautiful rugged coast with beautiful coast lines.

This was not Cudillero but rather Pechon in Cantabria. A lovey view to the Bay of Biscay.

Cute towns perched above or at the sea of proud, isolate people living a live of fishing and mountain life combined.

Cudillero from the hills. We walked down the hill on a little trail into town.
Yes, there are some roads which we used (by car) to get back up after a lovely dinner.
Looking back at town from the harbour. It would have been an un-fun entry by boat. Yes, we walked all the way down the hill. Only Jim walked all the way back up to get the car as he did not join us for dinner. Every new cove seems to have a cute little town along the coast.

The Caves

We had another cave to visit, The Altamira Cave, a paleolithic cave painted roughly 22,000 years ago. It is not possible for “regular people” to visit the cave any longer. After discovery in the 1880’s until 1977 thousands of people visited the cave each year with an estimated of between 150,000 to 175,000 each year in the 1970’s! There was so much concern that the human activity and CO2 produced by humans would completely destroy the cave paintings that they cl0sed the caves to visitors in 1977 except for those studying it.

A portion of the replica cave.

Happily, as with several caves in Europe, they have created incredibly authentic reproductions of the caves for people to visit. They are incredibly good and accurate (although way too crowded).

More replica images.

They also have a great museum that discusses prehistory, the growth of various humanoid species in Europe and provides lots of useful artifacts to help in understanding the development of humans in Europe.

Our entrance to the replica cave provides a sense of what it is like to enter the cave (except with a nice walkway.
An artifact from the museum (a replica?). Not from this cave but rather from Wallendorf, an open air site in Austria. From 36,000 – 24,500 years ago. Even then people seemed to like buxom women!

The Wine

We made one winery visit in the La Rioja region. A very interesting winery, Bodega Gomez Cruzado . Founded in 1886, it has undergone several changes of ownership but interestingly, all the owners were Mexican The first owner had family roots in this area and wanted to start a winery in the area. We had a nice tour of the winery and then did a bit of tasting, and buying!

Spain likes to use concrete eggs for some fermentation. Apparently is helps create a richer body and helps with acidity.
There are some interesting rules in Rioja about wine labels and quality categorization based upon how long it is aged in oak. This winery seems to always break the rules so rarely has the better rating labels. They would rather do their own thing with their wines.
Most of their wine starts out in stainless steel tanks and is not punched down, but other is is small oak casks and stiffed carefully. Each winemaker has their own special process. We liked it enough that we bought a case!

Another Michelin Restaurant

Leesa was on the hunt for interesting food of the various regions we visited. She found an amazing restaurant, ARREA! the provided a glimpse of the foods of the mountain region in a modern way with lots of fermentation, smoking, drying and very interesting takes on the historical foods of the region. The chef was originally from this region and had his Michelin restaurant in his small home town, Santa Cruz de Compezo. This was in the mountains, but in Basque Country. So very different than our other Michelin restaurant, this place is much more relaxed and has a locals bar and menu options that are much more in line for someone not wanting spend lots of money.

We started out with a “picnic”. Here is half of it.
And the other half of the picnic. We ever had checkered napkins that were changed once our picnic was over. Lots of cured meats here, quail eggs, rustic pates, cheese, “mountain olives” which were actually some type of cherry, and more.
The chef and owner Edorta Lamo was front and center, telling us about each dish and doing final preparation at the table. This basically was a very rich butter/fat with a super concentrated boar sauce. it reminded me of eating the loveliest bits of my Mom’s roast fat and burnt bits.
After the picnic, we picked different food categories such as trout, quail, deer, boar and we then got 3 different preparations. This is Tartaleta de Morros. Fried boar snout with truffle flakes, acorn mayo and false clover flower. All local ingredients from the area. I can tell you all this as we were given a little wire bound booklet at the end which describes each dish! It was delicious!
The dessert presentation. Those are ganache nuts, not walnuts made from some sort of leaf. The leaves are creamed acorns. The macaroons are made from hazelnuts. The two others are too had to explain. The lichen on the front of the logs? Edible!

This was a completely amazing meal and likely the most creative I’ve ever had!

This portion of the trip was perhaps my favorite as I loved getting into the mountains and being in nature. Always my happy place. I still need to take you through Basque Country and back to Madrid. And that just gets us out of Spain…!

Now this is an interesting mirador sign. A large format camera.