Green Spain: the walking week that isn't the Camino crowd

The other Spain, the green wet one

Most people picture Spain dry. Ochre plains, white villages, a sun that flattens the afternoon. Come this far north and the picture changes completely. The hills are the colour of a snooker table. Beech and oak lean over the paths. The rivers run hard even in July. This is Green Spain, España Verde, and it is green for one plain reason. It rains here more than it does on the coast down south, and that rain is the whole point.

Casa Agara sits in Fresneda de Cabuérniga, a stone village in the Saja valley, inside the Saja-Besaya Natural Reserve. From the door you are already in it. Old drovers' tracks climb through the beech woods to open pasture. Shepherds still move cattle along some of them. A morning's walk takes you past cabin barns, spring-fed troughs, and the odd griffon vulture riding the thermals over the ridge.

Not the Camino, and that is the appeal

A Green Spain walking holiday sounds, on paper, like the Camino. It is not. The famous pilgrim routes are wonderful, and they are also busy, booked out in season, walked in a long line of rucksacks. The Saja valley hiking here is quiet. On a weekday in the hills you might pass a farmer and no one else. The trails were not built for tourists. They were built to get animals to grass, and they go where the good ground is.

You do not need to plan any of it. This is a hosted week, and the walking is part of the fabric. Someone who knows the ground picks the route to the weather and the legs in the group. Wet morning, you take the sheltered wood. Clear afternoon, you go up for the view. You walk, you come back to a warm house, and dinner is already cooking.

What the week actually feels like

Days have a shape. Breakfast, then out on foot. Somewhere on the hill you stop, and it is quiet enough to hear the river two valleys over. Back for a home-cooked dinner with a glass of something, house drinks included, at a long table with the other walkers. Rob and María host, Chispa the dog supervises from the hearth, and nobody is selling you an excursion.

Honest part. It rains. Some mornings come in grey and stay that way, and Green Spain earns its name in your boots. Pack for it and you will not care. The reward is colour that dry Spain never gets, empty paths, and air you can drink. Bring one properly waterproof jacket and a pair of broken-in boots, and the weather becomes weather, not a problem.

The walking suits most reasonably fit people. These are hills, not mountains, though you can go higher if the group wants a bigger day. You climb, you descend, and you feel it pleasantly by dinner.

Getting to the valley

You reach it by air, into Santander about an hour away, or Bilbao a little further. We collect you from the airport, so the walking starts at the door and not at a car hire desk.

If a quiet week on real trails in Green Spain is the escape you have been after, join one of our hosted walking weeks. Tell us roughly when you would like to come, and we will send you the dates that are open.