Family holiday in Northern Spain... Any recommendations?

[Kermit power]

Evening all,

I'm looking at summer holiday options for next year. I was looking at renting a villa near Dénia on the Costa Blanca, having lived there 25 years back, and all was going well until figuring out that just the flights and a large enough rental car for a family of five in August are going to come out at around £1,800, so now I'm thinking we might as well get a ferry from Portsmouth over to Bilbao or Santander, which will save a couple of hundred quid, avoid the joys of airports at unpleasant times and give me my Merc to drive rather than some crappy people carrier...

The question is, if we're arriving on the Northern coast of Spain, is it worth the 6+ hour drive to get over to the Med, or would we be better off staying on the Atlantic coast? Does anyone have any recommendations for places to stay up there? Rough criteria include:

- Kids not getting too bored. Girl of 16 (so a tall order anyway!) and boys of 13 & 11.

- Decent beaches.

- Decent non-beach stuff, eg mountain walks etc.

- Not too remote, as my wife can't drive, so I'll have to do all the shuttling around.

On a related point, does anyone with 3 kids have any experience of booking package holidays? I've never booked one before, but thought I'd give it a go, only to find that every single bloody one seems to insist on having at least one adult in every room! I'm damned if I'm going on holiday for a fortnight and kipping with the boys, but it's unreasonable to expect our 16yr old daughter to do so either, so how do we get an extra room???

[eldar]

Asturias is delightful, kind of the Spanish Lake District. Not far from Santander, and some beautiful scenery. and beaches. English tourists are relatively infrequent which is a bonus.

Food is excellent, particularly seafood, and the local cidre is cheap and excellent and served with style, escanthier bars are well worth visiting.

Gijon is a good base, plenty ro entertain kids.

[castex]

Donostia has everything, and everything else is easily reached by train. Go.

[Kermit power]

eldar said:

Asturias is delightful, kind of the Spanish Lake District. Not far from Santander, and some beautiful scenery. and beaches. English tourists are relatively infrequent which is a bonus.

Food is excellent, particularly seafood, and the local cidre is cheap and excellent and served with style, escanthier bars are well worth visiting.

Gijon is a good base, plenty ro entertain kids.

That sounds promising, thanks!

I speak fluent Spanish anyway, so the lack of large contingents of Brits and all that entails is not a problem. I just don't know the northern coast at all!

[eldar]

Kermit power said:

That sounds promising, thanks!

I speak fluent Spanish anyway, so the lack of large contingents of Brits and all that entails is not a problem. I just don't know the northern coast at all!

If you speak Spanish it’s a bonus. The people are great, and is is very laid back and relaxing.

A lot of Spanish holiday there.

[Kermit power]

Eldar, you never said it had bears!!! Actual real life wild bears!!!

[eldar]

Kermit power said:

Eldar, you never said it had bears!!! Actual real life wild bears!!!

They and the wolves are very scarce! Plenty of eagles to be seen up in the Picos.

And Sidre.

https://www.turismoasturias.es/en/descubre/gastron...

[Harpoon]

We spent a week walking in the Pico de Europa a few years back. We were based just outside Potes but had a day on the coast at Llanes which was a nice place. The drive from the coast up to Potes has some fantastic scenery as you go through a gorge. Potes is a tourist centre for the Picos but has a great old portion.

Go a bit beyond Potes and you can get the cable car at Fuente De (longest single span cable car in Europe)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuente_D%C3%A9_cable...

Lagos de Covadonga is a legendary cycling climb and again some great scenery

[xcseventy]

Harpoon said:

We spent a week walking in the Pico de Europa a few years back. We were based just outside Potes but had a day on the coast at Llanes which was a nice place. The drive from the coast up to Potes has some fantastic scenery as you go through a gorge. Potes is a tourist centre for the Picos but has a great old portion.

Go a bit beyond Potes and you can get the cable car at Fuente De (longest single span cable car in Europe)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuente_D%C3%A9_cable...

Lagos de Covadonga is a legendary cycling climb and again some great scenery

All good points.

Had a few family holidays around LLanes and Potes which were brilliant. Split 50/50 in a villa and camping. This was around July time.

I went back to Potes for a week back in May this year (cycling holiday). It was bloody freezing for the first few days, but then warmed up to around 17/18 degrees.

Main thing i'd say is it wont be as warm as other Spanish areas, and the weather is much more unpredictable. Such a great part of the country though.

[Kermit power]

All good advice, thanks.

At the moment, I think we're going to do a week in the Picos de Europa national park, and a week on the coast. Now we just need to narrow the latter down from "somewhere between Gijón and San Sebastián"!

[GreatGranny]

OP, re. 3 kids on a package holiday, we normally choose a hotel which has 2 bed apartments so there's no problem with the kids all sharing a room.

We did have 2 rooms a few years ago which were adjoining and the kids just went in one and us in the other.
The booking said 1 adult per room but the hotel weren't to know.

[Kermit power]

GreatGranny said:

OP, re. 3 kids on a package holiday, we normally choose a hotel which has 2 bed apartments so there's no problem with the kids all sharing a room.

We did have 2 rooms a few years ago which were adjoining and the kids just went in one and us in the other.
The booking said 1 adult per room but the hotel weren't to know.

That was fine when they were younger, but it's not really fair to expect mixed gender teenage siblings to share a room for a fortnight...

[PurpleTurtle]

eldar said:

Asturias is delightful, kind of the Spanish Lake District. Not far from Santander, and some beautiful scenery. and beaches. English tourists are relatively infrequent which is a bonus.

Food is excellent, particularly seafood, and the local cidre is cheap and excellent and served with style, escanthier bars are well worth visiting.

Gijon is a good base, plenty ro entertain kids.

What he said!

I did a motorbike trip along that north coast, Gijon was a lovely place to stay. Didn't see a single Brit on the piss, which is exactly what I want from my holidays. Great food and local cider in Asturias. Santiago di Compostella is nice for some culture, lots of people there walking the Pilgrim's Trail, if you wantot venture a bit further West.

On beaches, I would just urge a word of caution. We are a gang of 8 hairy arsed 40+ bikers, all what you might call 'rugby player build'. We stopped an hour outside of Santander as we were early for our ferry, all went down on the beach for a quick dip in the Atlantic on what you would consider an innocuous looking 'safe' beach. After 10 minutes of larking about in the sea we got caught in a rip current. I know all about rips, having spent my teenage years surfing in Cornwall, but had never actually been caught in one. It was pretty terrifying and not something I want to experience again. Worst bit was that I *know* that the theory is to swim across them rather than against them, but all that went out the window in sheer panic when this motherfker rip came from nowhere and tried to drag us out to sea. Never been so relieved to get on dry land after a lot of hard swimming

I don't want to scaremonger - it's a beautiful part of the world and I'd go back in a heartbeat - but if you've got kids on the beach there make them aware of the dangers. This was in 3-4ft of water and literally pulled us off our feet, came from nowhere.

Edited by PurpleTurtle on Monday 17th December 13:32