Pola de Gordón (La)

A Mountain Town That Still Runs on Railway Time

The 08:03 from León rattles into La Pola de Gordón station at precisely 08:58. No one looks up. Cafés open their shutters at the same moment, bread vans unload, and the smell of strong coffee drifts across the single platform. This is a place where the timetable still governs the day, even though the coal wagons stopped running decades ago.

At 1,050 m above sea level, La Pola sits in a tight limestone trough carved by the river Bernesga. Mountains shoulder in from every side, their slate roofs turning the same grey as the morning cloud. The air is thin enough that a brisk walk to the bakery can leave you short of breath if you’ve just arrived from sea level. Locals take it as a matter of pride: “We live above the fog,” one shopkeeper remarks, wrapping half a kilo of quesillo for the onward journey.

Stones, Timber and the Memory of Mines

Forget chocolate-box Spain. The town centre is a working mixture of stone houses, aluminium garage doors and the occasional 1970s apartment block. Timber balconies sag under geraniums; granite corners are chipped where delivery vans have mis-judged the angle. The parish church of San Pedro squats at the top of the main street, its Romanesque tower patched so often the stone has become a mosaic. Inside, the air smells of candle wax and damp hymn books; a side chapel remembers the 1934 revolution with a cracked photograph and a bunch of plastic roses.

Mining shaped the streets more than tourism ever has. Follow the river upstream for ten minutes and you reach the old washery at Fabero, its conveyor tower now fenced off but still visible from the road. Children who once played in the spoil heaps are today the grandparents serving cider in the bars, and they’ll tell you—without being asked—how many tonnes of coal left the valley each day in 1958. The heritage is proud, unsentimental: a mural of a helmeted miner on the civic centre wall, a retired pit wheel planted upright beside the football pitch.

Walking Tracks That Start at the Doorstep

You don’t need a car to get onto the ridge. A stony lane climbs from the back of the health centre, passing vegetable plots protected by slate walls higher than your head. Forty minutes of thigh-burning gradient brings you onto the PR-LE-7, a way-marked loop that rims the Val de Gordon at 1,500 m. Buzzards ride the thermals; cowbells clank somewhere in the beech wood below. In April the slopes are yellow with broom; by late October the same bushes rattle like castanets in the wind.

Long-distance walkers use La Pola as the first rail-linked staging post on the Camino Olvidado, the “Forgotten Way” to Santiago. Day-trippers can piggy-back on the route for a 16 km circuit that drops back to town via Vega de Gordón, where stone granaries stand on stilts above the lane. GPS helps—signposts vanish whenever the path crosses a livestock fence—but the locals are refreshingly accurate with directions. “Turn left at the abandoned fridge,” is not a joke; the fridge really is there, slowly rusting into the bracken.

When the River Decides the Menu

Restaurant choices are limited and none the worse for it. Mesón la Casona opens only at lunchtime and shuts when the guisado runs out. Order cocido leonés and you receive a clay bowl of chickpeas, cabbage and morcilla hefty enough to keep a miner warm through a twelve-hour shift. Vegetarians can ask for garlic soup, but expect a concerned glance: mountain logic says meat equals fuel. A media ración of queso de Valdeón—blue, tangy, wrapped inPlane tree leaves—costs €5 and pairs surprisingly well with a bottle of local cider, poured from shoulder height into a wide glass. Get it wrong and the barman will do it for you, wasting half the bottle in the process; stand back or your shoes will be sticky for the rest of the day.

Evenings are quiet. The bakery reopens at five, the pavement lights flicker on at ten, and by half-past eleven only the slot-machine bar by the roundabout stays open. Plan accordingly: if you fancy a night-cap, buy it when you buy dinner.

Getting There, Getting Cash, Getting Cold

Renfe Feve narrow-gauge trains still run east–west along the old mining line. From León the ride is 55 minutes and €6.40; from the Asturian coast at Cudillero it’s a spectacular three-hour ascent through 38 tunnels. Both services accept bikes without reservation—handy if you want to tackle the Puerto de Pajares pass (12 km at 6 %) and freewheel back to town afterwards. Drivers coming from Santander ferry port should allow 2 h 30 min on the A-66; petrol stations thin out after Benavides and most close on Sundays.

Altitude has its drawbacks. Night-time temperatures can dip below freezing any month of the year; snow chains are compulsory equipment from November to March, even if the tarmac looks clear. The municipal pool opens only from July to early September, and two euros buys you forty metres of outdoor lane with mountain views—unless the lifeguard decides the water is too cold and sends everyone home.

Cash remains king. Only two ATMs serve the town, both on the same junction; when one runs out on a Saturday the queue for the other stretches past the cake shop. Bring euros, especially if you’re checking in late—hotel key cards have a habit of demagnetising when the system switches to generator backup during mountain storms.

A Town That Doesn’t Need Your Pity

La Pola will never be cute. The river wall is graffitied, dogs bark from flat-bed trucks, and winter fog can sit in the valley for days, turning every street into a refrigerator. Yet for walkers, rail romantics or anyone who wants to see how Spain survives when the tourists leave, it delivers an unvarnished welcome. You’ll pay Spanish prices, eat Spanish portions and hear Spanish spoken with the closed “o” of León. Stay a couple of days, ride the train onward to the coast, and the mountains will follow you out of the window long after the track levels out.