Hermandad de Campoo de Suso

The A-67 from Santander climbs through eucalyptus and dripping gorges until the radio loses Radio 4 and the dashboard shows 1,300 m. Suddenly the trees step back, the wind picks up, and a scatter of stone roofs appears on both sides of the valley: Hermandad de Campoo de Suso, a municipality that refuses to behave like a town. There is no high street, no square with a single photogenic bar, just fourteen separate hamlets stitched to the mountainside by a road that forgets to stay level.

A Map That Lies

Sat-nav says Cervatos to Proaño is seven minutes. What it omits is the 200-metre drop to the river and the hairpin back up, narrow enough to make you fold the mirrors on a Fiesta. The valley floor sits at roughly 1,000 m, high enough for snow to linger in March and for summer evenings to demand a jumper. British drivers who cope with the Cairngorms will recognise the calculus: add ten minutes for every sheep on the tarmac, twenty if the fog rolls in.

Park in Cervatos and the first thing you notice is the smell of new-mown hay mixed with woodsmoke. The second is the Collegiate Church of San Pedro, its south portal crowded with centuries-old carvings that would make a Morris dancer blush. The erotic corbels aren’t hidden round the back; they’re at eye level, executed with the same nonchalance as the vegetable market in Wells Cathedral. The door is often locked—services are advertised on a piece of cardboard and times change with the priest’s diary—so treat the exterior as the main exhibition. Walk slowly; the stone is warm after midday and the detail rewards a five-minute pause rather than a selfie sprint.

Stone, Snow and Sunday Lunch

Move on to Villacantid and Suano only if you enjoy the rhythm of getting lost. The Románico here is understated: square towers, thick walls, a simplicity that feels closer to Dartmoor longhouses than to Santiago’s baroque theatrics. Inside, the air is cool and smells of wax and mouse. Lighting is fifty cents in a slot meter; take coins. Between churches the road dips into holloways lined with cow parsley and dry-stone walls that could be transplanted from Yorkshire until you spot the chestnut-coloured Tudanca cattle grazing right up to the doorstones.

Elevation keeps the architecture honest. Roof pitches are steep, eaves low, balconies shallow enough to stop draughts. Many houses carry dated keystones—1773, 1821—proof of rebuilding after the valley’s last big fire or winter collapse. Prosperity once came from transhumance; merchants left their coats of arms on mansions that now sit beside bungalows with satellite dishes. The mix is refreshing: no heritage committee has tidied the contradictions away.

Come for the day and you’ll need to plan around lunch. Most bars open only for the menú del día, served at two o’clock sharp and cleared by four. Expect vegetable soup, grilled veal from the local Tudanca herd, and quesada pasiega, a baked-cheese affair that sits halfway between cheesecake and Sussex pudding. Vegetarians can ask for cocido montañés without the chorizo, but the beans are still simmered in pork fat—discretion may be the better choice. Cider comes in 330 ml bottles, dry and sharp; think Thatchers Haze without the bubbles.

When the Valley Closes

Winter turns the place feral. The ski station at Alto Campoo is twenty-five minutes higher yet accommodation down here is cheaper, so weekend visitors pour in when snow is forecast. Book restaurants early; Spanish families occupy tables for the afternoon and the kitchen won’t reopen. Chains or winter tyres are compulsory from December to March—Guardia Civil patrols fine on the spot, no sympathetic chat about “all-season” rubber. Even with grip, the last kilometre to your rural cottage can be a polished slide; owners leave shovels by the door and expect you to use them.

Summer brings the opposite problem: heat at midday is fierce despite the altitude, and shade is rationed. Walkers should start early. A good leg-stretch begins at Naveda, follows the livestock track south-east to the abandoned hamlet of Trillayo, then contours back through Scots pine. The round is 8 km with 350 m of ascent—moderate by Lake District standards—but carry water; streams are fenced off for livestock. In May the verges are thick with wild peonies; by late June the grass is cropped to bowling-green smoothness.

Phone signal dies in every side valley. Download offline maps before you leave Reinosa, the nearest small town, and fill the tank there too. Petrol stations in the valley open when the owner returns from milking; card machines are sporadic. A cash point exists in Cervatos but it eats UK cards for sport—bring euros.

What You Won’t Tick Off

There is no checklist experience here, which is precisely the point. You could spend half an hour in Proaño photographing balconies and realise the only sound is a chain on a gate. You might wait twenty minutes outside Santa Juliana for a key that never materialises, then discover the real spectacle is a lammergeier circling above the beech wood. British tick-box tourism—castle, cream tea, carpark—doesn’t translate; the valley rewards curiosity and a tolerance for dead ends.

Even the river, the Ebro, is shy. You glimpse it only where the road drops low enough to cross, a milky torrent that starts 800 m higher and will reach the Atlantic near Bilbao, having changed its name twice. Bring binoculars, not for rare birds but for reading church inscriptions on the far hillside without climbing back up.

Leave time for the minor roads west of Suano. The tarmac narrows to a single track with limestone outcrops on one side and meadows on the other. Pull in at the viewpoint above the polje—yes, the locals use the Slovenian word—and you can watch weather systems slide in from the Cantabrian coast like time-lapse on Countryfile. Then the fog closes the curtain and you drive the last kilometres by memory and cat’s-eyes, grateful the hire company insisted on fully-comp.

Getting Back Before Dark

If the plane leaves Santander at dusk, aim to be on the A-67 by four. Fog descends without warning and the Guardia close the summit if visibility drops below fifty metres. Winter flights are cheaper but carry the risk of an overnight near the airport; the Holiday Inn Express at the Santander roundabout is clean, anonymous and infinitely safer than a black-ice descent at six in the morning.

Hermandad de Campoo de Suso will not suit everyone. It offers no souvenir shops, no guided ghost walks, no gin distillery with a visitor centre. What it does give is the sensation of being briefly folded into a working mountain society that continues after you leave. Drive out of the valley and you’ll see a farmer still scything by hand, a woman in an apron sweeping the road because it’s hers until the next snowfall. The memory feels less like a holiday boast, more like stumbling on a chapter that isn’t in the English edition.