Camping in Palencia: the highest concentration of Romanesque in Europe and an unknown mountain range
Palencia is one of the least visited provinces of Castile and León and, precisely for that reason, one of the most rewarding destinations for those looking for authenticity and places without crowds. The capital has a cathedral popularly known as La Bella Desconocida (the Unknown Beauty), a superb Gothic building with a Visigothic crypt and a collection of tapestries and altarpieces that in any other city would generate queues. The unhurried pace of the city and the friendliness of its people make a stay here always pleasant.
The Palencia mountains, in the north of the province, are the great secret of Castile. The peaks of Espigüete and Curavacas rise above 2,500 metres and offer demanding but rewarding mountain climbs. Fuentes Carrionas y Fuente Cobre Natural Park is home to one of the few populations of brown bear that survive in the southern Cantabrian Mountains, along with herds of chamois and notable high mountain birdlife. The beech, sessile oak and Scots pine forests of this area have an especially intense autumn beauty. The mountain villages, Cardaño de Arriba, Triollo and Velilla del Río Carrión, keep a vernacular stone architecture that blends into the landscape.
The Palencia Romanesque route is the most original cultural offering in the province. Dozens of 11th- and 12th-century churches and hermitages dot the valleys of the Carrión, the Boedo and the Pisuerga, many of them in hamlets with few inhabitants or even abandoned. San Martín de Frómista, right on the French Way of St James, has the Romanesque church considered the most perfect in Spain for the purity and balance of its proportions. The pilgrim route crosses the province from east to west and lets you combine pilgrimage or long-distance walking with a visit to this exceptional heritage.
The Canal de Castilla, built in the 18th century to connect the plateau with the Bay of Biscay, runs through the province in several branches and is now a greenway that can be cycled among locks, fulling mills and stone aqueducts. Campsites in the province are few, which is worth knowing in advance to plan your trip well. Roast lechazo, Palencia vegetable menestra, mountain cheeses and convent pastries are the flavours that best represent an honest land without frills.
