Robla (La)

At 955 metres, La Robla’s high-street chemist sits higher than Ben Nevis’s summit. The air is thinner, the winters longer, and the stone houses still carry a faint film of coal-dust in their pores. This is not a village that has reinvented itself as a week-end playground; it is a working mountain town whose last mine closed only twenty-five years ago and whose inhabitants still set their clocks by the 07:13 freight to León.

The Smell of Coal and Coffee

Walk downhill from the modern polideportivo and you reach the railway embankment that made the place. In 1894 engineers punched the metre-gauge line through the Bernesga valley so wagons of black coal could rattle to the steelworks at Avilés. The track is still busy: four-times-daily regional trains, long oil tankers, and—twice a week in summer—the Expreso de La Robla, a burgundy-and-gold luxury train whose passengers sleep in mahogany cabins and pay £450 a night. They stop for photos, then vanish. The town shrugs and goes back to its beer.

Cross the footbridge and the first open door belongs to Café de la Estación, fluorescent lights, formica tables, perfect. Pilgrims on the Camino de San Salvador queue here at dawn for tortilla that is cut in door-stop wedges and costs €2.80 with coffee. The barman keeps a drawer full of rubber stamps; scallop-shell credentials flap like bunting. By nine the queue has gone: truck drivers replace walkers, and the television above the urn shows yesterday’s fútbol highlights with the sound off.

Stone, Timber, Concrete

La Robla’s centre is a ten-minute rectangle that can be walked in seven but deserves seventy. Start at the plaza where the weekly market sets up on Tuesdays: tarpaulin stalls selling socks, peppers, and giant sacks of rabbit pellets. The parish church of San Miguel overlooks it—Romanesque bones, Baroque skin, twentieth-century concrete patches where the roof gave in. The bell tower works as the local compass; lose your bearings on the narrow pavements and you only have to look up.

Side streets alternate between stone houses with wooden balconies (wisteria, satellite dishes) and 1970s blocks painted the colour of packet soup. You will not find souvenir shops; instead there are two hardware stores, a shop that mends sewing machines, and a bakery that closes at 13:00 sharp. Peek through the gates of the old Casa de los Escudos and you can still make out the coats of arms hacked by nineteenth-century masons—lions, stars, pick-axes—before the building was turned into council flats.

When the Shift Ends

Afternoon is siesta time, but the concept here is practical rather than romantic. Metal shutters clatter down because people need to cook, collect children, walk dogs along the Bernesga river path. That path is the town’s informal promenade: 2.5 km of packed earth, poplars on one side, kitchen gardens on the other. In April the air smells of onion tops and thawing manure; in October the roar is from tractors hauling hay bales before the first frost. Frost arrives early—night temperatures dip below zero from late October—and the surrounding summits collect snow while León’s plain is still brown.

Walk south for forty minutes and you reach the spoil heaps of the Mina María Luisa, closed 1998. A wire fence stops nobody; locals use the plateau for weekend barbecues. Look back and the whole town is laid out like a map: the slate roofs, the football pitch, the aluminium warehouse that used to be the washery. If the day is clear you can pick out the cable-car tower that once carried miners over the ridge to Pozo Barredo—a steel skeleton now, rusting into lace.

Legs, Wheels, Appetite

La Robla sells itself on senderismo folders printed by the regional tourist board, but the best walking is unofficial. Follow the road past the cemetery and a dirt lane climbs through Scots pine to the Collada de Carmenes (1,420 m). The gradient is honest—400 m of ascent in 4 km—and the reward is a view south to the Cordillera Cantábrica and north across the coal-dusty Cuenca Minera. The track is runnable in trainers May-October; December-February you will want micro-crampons once the shale ices over.

Road cyclists arrive for the Puerto de La Robla, a 12-km ascent averaging 5 % that joins the main N-630 at Busdongo. British cycling clubs based in León run chain-gangs here on Saturday mornings; expect quarry lorries but also long sight-lines and forgiving gradients. Mountain bikers head the opposite way, following forest fire-breaks where coal trucks once crawled. There is no bike shop in town—carry spares.

Back in the streets, hunger is straightforward. Asador El Roblón serves cecina (air-dried beef, €9 a plate) that tastes somewhere between bresaola and smoked ham; order it “algo curada” if you prefer less salt. House red comes in 500 ml bottles that cost €4 and last exactly as long as the meat. Vegetarians usually end up at Pizzeria Roma—thin bases, tinned sweetcorn, Spanish families arguing over Real Madrid. Portions are large; main courses routinely exceed 800 g. The local digestive adjustment is licor café, a thick coffee-and-aguardiente liqueur served in shot glasses kept in the freezer. One is medicinal, two is unwise, three guarantees an early bed.

Getting Stuck, Getting Out

Stay the night and you discover the town’s real limitation: darkness falls, shutters close, silence thickens. Bars shut by 23:00 even on Saturday; the only light comes from the Estación vending machine and the all-night petrol-station shop that sells fishing bait and instant mash. Bring a book, or practise your Spanish with the night-shift nurse drinking cortados at the counter.

Hotels are functional. The station-side hostals get noise from the freight yard; walk five minutes to the Hostal El Castaño instead—clean rooms, €40 double, radiator that works. Pilgrims pay €10 for the municipal albergue (20 beds, hot shower, no sleeping-bags required). If you want charm you are in the wrong postcode; if you want Wi-Fi that streams iPlayer, you are fine.

The railway is still the easiest exit. Three regional trains daily to León (55 min, €7.50), connecting with the Madrid-Irun fast line. From León the overnight Trenhotel to Paris links with the Eurostar at Lille; total London-La Robla journey hovers around fourteen civilised hours if the Spanish connection behaves. Driving is quicker—A-66 dual carriageway all the way from Santander ferry port—but remember to fill the tank on the coast; petrol stations thin out after Palencia and night-time temperatures can kill a battery faster than you expect.

Worth the Detour?

La Robla will not change your life. It offers no cathedral, no Michelin stars, no craft-beer taproom. What it does offer is a slice of upland Spain that still answers to its own rhythm: school bells, freight timetables, the first snow on the ridge, the last caña before closing. Come with realistic expectations and a waterproof, and you will leave understanding why half the town keeps a pick-axe head on the mantelpiece—even if the coal has gone.