Valle de Mena

The valley begins where the motorway ends. One moment you’re on the A-8, Bilbao’s commuter traffic still in the mirror; the next, the road narrows, hedgerows close in, and a sign welcomes you to “Las Merindades – Burgos”. At 320 metres above sea level, the air is already cooler, smelling of damp leaf-litter and newly-cut hay. This is Valle de Mena, a 59-village municipality squeezed between Cantabria’s oak woods and the high plateau of Castile. The guidebooks haven’t agreed on what to call it, which is why most British number plates you’ll see belong to people who took a wrong turn looking for the Nervión waterfall and decided to stay for lunch.

A Valley of Crossed Frontiers

The Romans came for the iron, the medieval lords for the tolls, and twentieth-century smugglers for the duty-free coffee that moved under cover of darkness across the nearby Basque border. The result is a place that feels neither wholly Castilian nor coastal. Farmhouses have the stone-slab roofs of Cantabria but the ochre plaster of Burgos; menus list alubias rojas beside bacalao al pil-pil; and the Spanish spoken here carries the soft s that travellers usually associate with San Sebastián. Even the weather is undecided: Atlantic fronts stall against the Montes de Ordunte, giving the valley twice Madrid’s annual rainfall and summers mild enough for chestnut trees to prosper.

Driving in is straightforward if you’ve hired a car at Bilbao airport: 95 km on toll-free roads, about 75 minutes. Public transport exists—twice-daily ALSA coaches—but they deposit you in Villasana de Mena with no onward links to the hamlets. Without wheels you’re dependent on shank’s pony or the kindness of farmers who still think nothing of giving a stranger a lift to the next village.

Stone Towers and Sunday-Only Churches

Forget postcard plazas and manicured casco histórico. Valle de Mena’s heritage is scattered along 400 square kilometres of curling country roads. The 12th-century church of Santa María de Siones stands alone beside a pasture where blond rubia gallega cattle graze; its Romanesque doorway is exquisite, but the heavy wooden doors are often locked because the priest covers seven parishes. A mile away, the Torre de los Velasco rises like a broken tooth above Villasana’s backstreets. You can’t climb it—health-and-safety never reached rural Burgos—but leaning against the warm masonry while swallows dive overhead gives a clearer sense of medieval power than any audio guide.

Head north towards the salt-water gorge of the Nervión and you’ll pass half-a-dozen identical hamlets: stone houses, a pillared frontón, maybe a bar whose opening hours are dictated by the owner’s harvest schedule. Stop in San Justo on a Sunday morning and you’ll find the tiny Ermita de la Blanca teeming with parishioners in Sunday best, singing hymns accompanied by an accordion that has seen better decades. The service finishes at noon; by 12:15 the benches are stacked, the doors locked, and the village returns to silence until next week.

Walking the Green Lanes

The valley floor is farmland, but the slopes are clothed in beech and oak. Waymarked paths follow old cabañas routes—drovers’ roads wide enough for a dozen oxen—that linked high summer pastures with riverside mills. The most popular hike is the five-kilometre track to the Salto del Nervión viewpoint. After heavy rain the waterfall plunges 222 metres into an amphitheatre of limestone; in August it can dwindle to a silver thread. Either way you’ll share the mirador with more Griffon vultures than people.

For solitude, try the circular route from Orbaneja del Castillo up through the hay meadows to the abandoned village of Valtueña. The path climbs gently through fern-lined lanes, gaining 300 metres in two kilometres—enough to work up an appetite but not an oxygen debt. Mid-week you can walk all morning and meet only the occasional shepherd on a quad bike, checking his solar-powered stock fence.

Boots are advisable even for short strolls: clay paths turn claggy after the slightest shower, and cow pats are a constant. Download an offline map—mobile signal vanishes in every second valley—and carry a light jacket; afternoon cloud can roll in from the Bay of Biscay faster than you can say chispeando.

Beans, Beef, and the House Wine that Isn’t Rioja

Food is farmhouse plain but proud. The local alubias rojas—small, maroon beans—arrive simmered with morcilla, carrot and a bay leaf that was probably picked from a roadside tree. A full portion at Casino de Mena in Villasana costs €12 and feeds two; ask for a media ración if you want space for the stewed beef that follows. Vegetarians aren’t ignored, but they should expect eggs, peppers and more beans—request judías blancas if you’d like the white variety cooked simply with garlic and paprika.

Wine lists are short and local: look for chacolí, the spritzy young white made from Hondarrabi Zuri grapes grown an hour north. It’s poured from height into small tumblers, producing a temporary foam that looks theatrical but helps aerate the modest alcohol. If you prefer red, the house crianza will be from nearby Rioja Alavesa, served at cellar temperature—cooler than most Brits expect, ideal with the faintly smoky beef.

Finish with queso de Valdeón, the valley’s blue cheese. Restaurants normally offer a tapering slab; if the strength frightens you, request una porción pequeña and you’ll get a sliver edged with sycamore leaves, strong enough to make its point but not to clear the table.

Where to Sleep and When to Bother

Accommodation is limited and sensible: two small hotels in Villasana, a handful of rural casonas converted into five-room guesthouses, and a scattering of self-catering cottages whose fireplaces get heavy use in winter. Mid-week rates hover around €70 for a double, breakfast included. July and August fill with Bilbao families escaping the coast; May–June and September–October deliver empty trails, mild afternoons and blackberries the size of olives along every lane.

Winter is dramatic—snow dusts the beech woods and log smoke drifts across the road—but daylight is short and some passes close when the wind blows hard from the north. If you do come between December and February, book somewhere with central heating; Spanish stone farmhouses were built for summer heat retention, not winter cosiness.

The Catch You Should Know

There is no ATM in half the villages, card machines crash when the broadband flickers, and the nearest trauma hospital is an hour away in Burgos. The valley is quiet to the point of tedium after dark; nightlife is a choice between the bar with the television on or the one with the television off. Rain is possible in every season—pack a thin waterproof and a sense of humour.

Yet for drivers who don’t mind narrow bridges and hikers happy to trade summit bragging rights for empty forest tracks, Valle de Mena offers something increasingly scarce: a slice of northern Spain where the menu hasn’t been translated and the landscape still belongs to the people who work it. Arrive with a full tank, an empty stomach and no fixed itinerary, and the valley will write its own route across your windscreen.