Cantabria

The coast runs west from Santander through Santillana and Comillas to San Vicente, and east through Somo and Laredo to Santoña. The eastern half has the better beaches and the anchovy industry; the western half has the villages.

Somo and Liencres for sand close to Santander, El Sardinero for a city beach with pavilions, and the smaller coves around San Vicente. All Atlantic: cold water, real waves, and crowded for eight weeks a year.

Cantabrian anchovies, the best in Spain; rabas, cocido montañés, and the dairy of the Pas valleys in sobao pasiego and quesada. Fish is landed at Santoña and San Vicente and eaten within a day; the inland villages cook beans and pork.

Altamira, whose paintings changed how archaeology thinks about prehistoric people; the collegiate church at Santillana del Mar; and Santo Toribio de Liébana, which holds a fragment of the True Cross and was one of Christianity's four holy places in the Middle Ages.

Santander has high-speed rail from Madrid and an airport, and the coast villages have buses. Liébana, the Picos and the Pas valleys effectively require a car; the cable car at Fuente Dé is reached by road only.

Fuente Dé and the Picos, the Liébana villages, the Pas valleys, and the mountain road over the pass to Burgos. This is a region where the best of it is up a single-lane road with cows on it.

June and September for the mountains, when the weather settles and the paths are open. May and October for the coast without crowds. July and August are for beaches only, and the coast towns are full then.

August on the coast, and any plan that does not allow for rain — Cantabria averages over 1,200 millimetres a year, most of it between October and April.