Merindad De Montija

The first thing you notice is the white crust. From the roadside above Poza de la Sal it looks like frost, except the thermometer reads 28 °C and the fields below are terraces of glistening salt. A wooden sluice creaks, water trickles, and the only other sound is your hire-car door clicking shut. Merindad de Montija doesn’t shout for attention; it lets the landscape do the talking, and the conversation is mostly about what time does to stone, salt and very small communities.

A map of hamlets, not a town

Forget the idea of a single village square ringed by cafés. The municipality is a scatter of fourteen nuclei strung along secondary roads that ripple over the first low ridges of the Cantabrian foothills. Population 740, give or take a birth announcement. Distances feel trivial on paper—Villasante de Montija to El Crucero is six kilometres—but without a car they balloon into awkward logistics. Buses exist only on school-day timetables; the nearest railway halt is a request-stop used by two Regional Expres trains each direction. Rent at Bilbao airport (Ryanair from Stansted, 1 h 15 min) and you’ll be here in 95 km, most of it on the empty A-8 and the winding BU-570.

Where the salt paid the rent

Poza de la Sal’s salinas have been working since Rome collected taxes in denarii. A boardwalk loops past shallow clay ponds, timber channels and a small interpretation hut that opens weekends in summer (free, but donations welcome). The process is stubbornly analogue: gravity moves brine from pond to pond, sun and wind evaporate the water, salt crystals form overnight. Walk the circuit at 08:00 and you’ll share it only with a retired miner sweeping last night’s harvest into wicker baskets. Photography works best at dawn when the ponds blush pink; by noon the light flattens and the brine stings your eyes.

The salt stopped being an industry in 1986, yet you can still buy 250 g sachets for €2 at Bar Nuevo on the main street. The barman keeps them in an old cigar box under the counter, alongside lottery tickets and a sense of humour that survives on two languages—Spanish and silence.

Castle on the hill, church in the hollow

Five minutes uphill from the salt terraces the Castillo de los Rojas keeps watch from a sandstone outcrop. What remains is a hollowed keep, a stretch of battlement and views that stretch south across wheat plains until they dissolve in summer haze. Entry is free, guard-rails are sporadic and footing is uneven; wear trainers, not flip-flops. Down in the village the late-Gothic church of San Cosme y San Damián hides behind a stone portal carved with botanical graffiti—roses, thistles, what might be hops—evidence that medieval masons sampled the local wine while they worked. The key hangs in the bakery opposite; knock and the owner will wipe flour from her hands before letting you in.

Eating when the bars remember to open

Rural Castile still keeps shop hours from the 1970s. Lunch is 14:00–15:30, dinner 21:00–22:00, and nothing happens on Tuesday. In Villasante de Montija, Restaurante El Crucero serves a three-course menú del día for €12 that starts with garlic soup and ends with queso de Valdeón, the sharp blue from the Picos de Europa. Cordero lechal (milk-fed lamb) appears on weekends; order half a kilo for two and they’ll throw in peppers roasted over vine cuttings. Vegetarians get scrambled eggs with wild mushrooms—safe, filling, not adventurous. Cards are accepted, but the machine sometimes “falls asleep”; carry a €20 note to wake it up.

Walking without the altitude

This isn’t the Pyrenees. Tracks roll over moorland at 700–900 m, oak scrub giving way to wheat stubble in late June. The municipality way-marks two circular routes: the 7 km Salinas Loop (flat, muddy after rain) and the 12 km Montija Ridge circuit (200 m cumulative ascent, panoramic but shadeless). Both start at the old railway station in Villasante where an honesty box offers maps at €1; money goes to repainting way-marks. Spring brings poppies and the sound of cuckoos; autumn smells of wet earth and drying maize. In July the sun is relentless—start early or risk a lecture from the local doctor who treats British walkers for dehydration twice a season.

Where to sleep (all six rooms)

Accommodation fits on the back of an envelope. El Balcón de Montija has six doubles with beams, terracotta floors and a communal kitchen. Rates €70 B&B, cheaper if you stay three nights. The owner, Pilar, speaks school-trip English and will lend poles for walking. Hotel Rural Zalama looks grander but opens only Easter to October; confirmation emails bounce in winter, so phone. If you prefer canvas, Camping La Isla beside the River Montija charges €16 for two people plus tent, showers included, April–September. Out of season the site becomes a pasture for the council’s lawn-mower sheep.

Winter honesty

Come December the place hardens. Night temperatures drop below zero, fog pools in the valley for days and the salt ponds glaze over like ruined skylights. Bars reduce hours to Friday-through-Sunday, and the bakery operates on a call-ahead system. The compensation is clarity: when the mist lifts you can see the limestone front of the Cordillera 40 km away, and the castle ruins feel properly medieval under a dusting of frost. Bring boots, a coat, and don’t expect conversation before the first coffee.

A parting shot

Merindad de Montija won’t fill a fortnight. It might not even fill a weekend unless you enjoy studying the grain of oak doors or counting stork nests on telegraph poles. Treat it as a pause between Bilbao’s Guggenheim and the Picos’ massifs: two days of slow driving, short walks and the realisation that Spain still contains places where the loudest noise is a salt crust cracking in the sun. Take the salt sachet home; it tastes of somewhere the guidebooks haven’t yet taught to shout.