Camino del Norte
15.9 km, 95 m up and 25 m down, through 3 places. Where you stop is up to you.
Every place on the path in order, with the distance from Pobeña. Most are too small to sleep in — a fountain, a chapel, a bar that may or may not be open — but they are what the day is actually made of.
To keep on the camino, do not cross the parking lot. Instead look to your right; just past the Residencia Pobeña is a narrow path that takes you uphill for a beautiful walk along the headlands.The camino turns inland and passes under the A-8 just before arriving into Ontón, and along the way you cross into Cantabria.
In Ontón the camino climbs a set of stairs to bring you back up to the level of the N-634, at a point where the road curves sharply and arrows point in two distinct directions.Option 1: Along N-634 through Mioño & tunnel- 7.1To follow the new route, simply follow the bend in the road and keep on it as it twists and turns. It will cross under and over the A-8 several times before arriving in Mioño.Option 2: The Old Camino - 14.8The old camino route crossed over the N-634 at this bend, and followed the CA-523 in the direction of Baltezana. The way is still well marked but has been largely abandoned in favor of a newly marked route along the N-634.
Baltezana is on the old camino route, now largely abandoned in favor of the shorter Mioño variant. A quiet hamlet of about 300 residents with no pilgrim services. If you came this way, the route continues through Otañes …
Otañes is a hamlet of about 750 residents on the old camino route between Baltezana and Castro Urdiales. The area has Roman roots — the road through here follows an ancient route. No services for pilgrims.
A hamlet on the old camino route. The Iglesia de San Julián, dating to the 14th century, contains an unexpected treasure: an alabaster funerary sculpture of Juan de Garay, viceroy of Catalonia, depicted in 17th-century m…
The path splits here and rejoins before Santullán. Both ways are below, because the question is which to take, and that is not a question two separate pages can answer.
In Mioño the camino leaves the N-634 by turning left just before the church, following the signs to the Asador El Tunel. Just past the Asador (a bar and restaurant) is the Tunel, an 800m path cut through the mountainside. At the other end are the southern suburbs of Castro Urdiales, which you will enter along the N-634 (which went around the mountain as you went through it).
Distances are the sum of the town-to-town measurements in my data, not a straight line on a map. Climb and descent come from the altitude of each place listed above, so they under-read where the path goes over a hill between two of them.
Esta entidad ha sido beneficiaria de una ayuda del Programa de incentivos a la movilidad eficiente y sostenible (MOVES III), gestionado por la Xunta de Galicia a través del Instituto Enerxético de Galicia (INEGA) en el marco del Real Decreto 266/2021, y cofinanciada por la Unión Europea — NextGenerationEU, dentro del Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia.