San Vicente de la Barquera is where the Camino Lebaniego begins, the old pilgrim route that leaves the Cantabrian coast and climbs south into the mountains of Liébana to the monastery of Santo Toribio. The town sits on a pair of estuaries, with a long medieval bridge carrying the road across the water, a castle and the Gothic church of Santa María above the harbour, and on clear days the snowy peaks of the Picos de Europa rising behind the marshes like a stage set.
Pilgrims have walked from here for centuries, some breaking off from the coastal Camino de Santiago to venerate the fragment of the True Cross kept at Santo Toribio. The route takes several days on foot through valleys and over hills. On a motorcycle you will cover it in a morning, but it is worth knowing that you are riding a road with very old feet in it, especially when you see a walker with a scallop shell and a staff trudging up the verge.
The riding around San Vicente is a delight. The coast road west to Unquera and east towards Comillas passes beaches, dunes and the Oyambre natural park, with long views across the bay. Heading inland you soon reach the N-621, which follows the Deva river through the Desfiladero de la Hermida, a narrow limestone gorge some twenty kilometres long, before opening into the green bowl of Liébana. The roads are generally well surfaced, but expect wet patches, cattle, slow camper vans in summer and sea fog that rolls in quickly from the Bay of Biscay. Spring and late September are the sweet spots.
San Vicente is a fishing town with fuel, shops and a lot of seafood restaurants along the waterfront. The local specialty is sorropotún, a hearty stew of tuna and potatoes made by fishermen, and anchovies and fresh fish appear on every menu. Comillas, seven kilometres east, is worth a detour for its unusual modernist buildings, including El Capricho, an early work by Antoni Gaudí. At low tide the estuary turns into a mosaic of sandbanks and wading birds, and in the evening the light on the Picos can be extraordinary.