Day 11: Mungia to Santillana del Mar — Picos & Pyrenees May 2026

There’s a particular feeling that arrives on the second-to-last day of a long motorcycle tour. Not sadness exactly — more a sharpened attention. You start riding with a slightly different awareness, noticing details you might have let wash over you earlier in the week. The way the light hits a valley floor. The sound of a flat-twin at low revs through a village. The way a really good road feels under your tyres when you know there aren’t many more of them left on this trip.

Day 11 had all of that.

The full mix — Triumph Tiger, Harley Road King, Honda Africa Twin, Honda CB500X. At a high Pyrenean viewpoint with the valley road unspooling below.

Down from the Hills

We left Mungia in cool morning air, the hotel grounds still damp with dew. The road down from the Basque hills toward the coast and then west takes you through the kind of quiet countryside that never makes the travel magazines but stays with you long after the famous passes are forgotten. Small roads. Proper surfaces. Views that open and close with every bend.

The black Harley-Davidson Road King 114 at a high viewpoint — the road winding away into the mountains behind.

The Mountain Passes — One More Time

The route took us back through some of the mountain terrain we’d climbed earlier in the trip — the same soaring green ridgelines, the same winding tarmac switchbacking between cols. But riding it in the opposite direction, in different light, with a different set of legs beneath you, it felt entirely new. That’s the thing about great mountain roads — they repay revisiting.

On the road through the passes — riders coming up through the green Pyrenean walls, and a smile at the summit.

Three bikes, one perfect Pyrenean col — Harley Street Bob, Road King, and Triumph Tiger. The road winds on.

Back into the Picos

As the afternoon light softened, the landscape shifted into something familiar. The great limestone walls of the Picos de Europa reappeared on the horizon — the same peaks we’d ridden toward on Day 1, now greeting us again like old friends at the end of a long journey. There’s something deeply satisfying about a circular tour that brings you back through terrain you know. The circle completes.

We rolled into our final night’s accommodation with tired legs, good spirits, and the quiet knowledge that tomorrow would bring one last ride before the ferry home. Nobody said much about it. Nobody needed to.

As the afternoon light softened, the great limestone walls of the Picos de Europa reappeared on the horizon — the same peaks we’d ridden toward on Day 1, now greeting us like old friends at the end of a long journey. The circle was closing.

Santillana del Mar

We rode on through Cantabria and arrived at Santillana del Mar in the late afternoon — and it stopped everyone in their tracks. Often described as one of the best-preserved medieval towns in all of Spain, it lives up to every word of that. Every building on the main street dates from the 15th to 18th century. No modern shop fronts, no traffic lights, no visual noise. Just cobblestones, stone archways, timber balconies heavy with red geraniums, and a deep, unhurried quiet that feels genuinely ancient.

The main street of Santillana del Mar — unchanged for centuries, cobblestones and stone archways all the way down.

We parked the bikes and walked the old town on foot. After eleven days on motorcycles, moving through a place slowly — at walking pace, with no particular destination — felt like a different kind of pleasure. The group spread out naturally. Some found a café. Some wandered into the old collegiate church. Some just sat on a bench and watched the town go by.

The Parador de Gil Blas

Our hotel for the final night was the Parador de Gil Blas — a 15th-century manor house sitting right in the heart of the old town. Walking through the entrance arch, past the iron lantern that has hung there for centuries, into a stone-flagged courtyard with a sunny terrace and the kind of silence that only comes from very thick old walls — it was exactly the right way to end the trip.

The Parador de Gil Blas — the 15th-century entrance arch, and the sun-drenched flagstone terrace beyond it.

Settling in properly. The armchairs were earned.

The Col de Monge earlier that day — the last great summit of the tour before the descent to the coast.

The evening unfolded slowly and well. Dinner in the parador’s restaurant — proper Cantabrian cooking, good wine, the kind of meal that earns its place at the end of a long trip. Stories from the past twelve days circulated freely: the Picos on Day 2, the monastery at Samos, the pintxos bars in San Sebastián, the snow line on Day 8, the surprise of the Basque roads on Day 10.

The ferry would leave from Santander the next morning — just forty minutes up the coast. Bags would need to be packed. Bikes loaded onto the lower deck. The long Atlantic crossing home.

But that was tomorrow. Tonight there was a 15th-century courtyard, cold wine, twelve days of stories, and a group of riders who’d arrived as strangers and were leaving as friends.

Northern Spain had delivered everything it promised — and then some.