Trevor Huxham

Note: Today I’m re-publishing a guest post that I originally wrote for John Schellhase’s  Venture Spain blog back in March of 2015. It’s a shame he’s shutting down his excellent website for good, but he invited me to keep this piece floating around the Internet here. Hope y’all enjoy it! The northern coast of Spain stretching from Galicia to the Basque Country offers a welcome change from the bold landscapes of the country’s meseta or central plateau as rolling, sunbaked plains dotted by battle-tested castles and soaring Gothic cathedrals give way to lush forests, colorful fishing villages , dramatic mountains , and seaside cliffs . But there’s more to this region than the green, rainy coastline. The communities of Asturias, the Basque Country, and Cantabria are home to some of the best-preserved cave art that has come down to us from the Paleolithic era. (Source: Víctor Gómez ) Five times older than the pyramids of Giza, the rock art in northern Spain was painted by ...

The main drag through town After killing an hour or so in the Cantabrian town of Comillas by seeing a house designed by Gaudí , we hopped back in the car to continue our Roommate Road Trip and drove a couple of minutes further east to Santillana del Mar, just inland from Spain’s northern coast. This village has a reputation of being el pueblo más bonito de España —“Spain’s the prettiest village”—so our hopes were high as we cruised around tree-lined country roads, passing among fields that smelled of manure and a few shuttered-up hamlets. Unfortunately, Santillana didn’t live up to its fame. Afternoon shade Before I continue, it’s basically required of me to repeat that stupid joke that everyone tells whenever this town’s name is mentioned in passing. Santillana is known as la villa de las tres mentiras  (“the town of the three lies”) because it isn’t holy, flat, or on the sea. Ha ha ha, so funny, right? Wrong. I’ve never really got the joke because not only does t...

Rooftop view Today I’m finally getting around to writing about the road trip my housemates and I went on along Spain’s northern coast…in October. Sorry, guys! I’m so far behind, but I’ve got a long backlog of posts to work through. Our first stop along this tour of Spain’s most beautiful cliffs, beaches, mountains, and countrysides was the seaside village of Comillas in tiny coastal Cantabria. After warming up with the last fall rays of sunshine over a short  cortado  coffee, we packed in to our rental car and headed out of our base in San Vicente de la Barquera to Comillas. Sunflower tiles This town wouldn’t even have been on my radar had it not been home to one of the three buildings that architect Antoni Gaudí designed outside his native Catalunya. In fact, it was one of his first: El Capricho de Gaudí. Earlier in the year I had visited the other two commissions he took outside Catalunya, the Casa de los Botines in León and the Episcopal Palace in Astorga ,...

This past weekend, my American housemates and I all happened to have the same four days off of school due to a fortunate overlapping of three-day workweeks and school breaks for the All Saints’ holiday. Taking advantage of some of the last non-rainy days in northern Spain of the season, we hopped in a rental car and drove from Santiago de Compostela out to San Vicente de la Barquera, a small fishing village on the Cantabrian coast about halfway between Galicia and the Basque Country. View this post on Instagram Lastres, merely "one of" the most beautiful villages in Spain 😌 // #ocean #pueblosconencanto #lastres #colunga #asturias #spain #travel #vsco #vscocam A post shared by Trevor Huxham (@trevorhuxham) on Nov 2, 2014 at 11:05am PST We crashed at our housemate Rachel’s boyfriend’s apartment and used San Vicente as a home base to explore the northern coast of Spain, Asturias and Cantabria. On Friday,...