The Landscape Archive

Winter in the Cantabrian Mountains.

Spain is known for its good weather with lots of sunshine, but in the mountainous areas thick layers of freshly fallen snow are quiet normal.This year the snowfall came at the end of January, which gave me the opportunity to shoot the "white photos" of the following photos session.             

The Natural Park of Monte Santiago: A 300 m high waterfall.

Introduction: In this post I want to share some pictures of the Monte Santiago Natural Park, with its 300 meters high waterfall: “El salto del Río Nervión”.Most of the Spanish northern meseta is separated from the north coast by the Cantabrian Mountains. However, at the Monte Santiago Natural Park the meseta is directly adjacent to the lowland of Basque Country. The border between both regions consists of a dizzying steep cliff of about 600 meters. In this place the river Nervión flows over the edge and plunges down.

The limestone cliffs of the AsturianCoast.

Introduction: At some places the northern border of the Cantabrian Mountains almost reaches to the Bay of Biscay, from which it is only separated by a narrow coastal plain, and one of these places is the east of Spanish province of Asturias. Here the plain consists mainly of limestone, which is a rock with the property that it is slightly soluble in water. For this reason the eternal waves of the ocean have sculpted a very particular terrain with steep cliffs and numerous sea caves. 

The Riaño lake, the Valley of Oseja de Sajambre and Covadonga.

Introduction: From Cistierna, a village situated on the southern edge of the Cantabrian Mountains, to Covadonga we have to cross almost the entire Cantabrian Mountain chain. The 100 km which separate both villages can be driven by car in about 2 hours, although the beauty of the landscape probably will cause a considerable delay. Yesterday we repeated this trip and in this post I want to share some pictures of some very special places we came along.