Twenty Days, Three of Them Empty
Inside the way a slow walking journey through Northern Spain is built.
In one Australian couple’s itinerary for summer 2027, three days have no tours, no transfers and no fixed plan. They sit on the Asturian palace grounds, on the western Asturian coast and at the end of the Camino, on the Costa da Morte, where the day belongs to an infinity pool, a spa and a beach below the hotel. The plan leaves them empty on purpose.
“A twenty-day journey gives us the ability to design a more relaxed trip, with more quiet days to enjoy, as long as the client wants it that way,” says Oliver Blazquez, CEO of Northern Spain Travel.
The pace comes first
Every journey begins with a conversation, and the first thing the team settles with its travellers is how fast they want to go. “It is not the same to come for seven or ten days as to stay for twenty or twenty-five,” Oliver says. “The rhythm we have to build into the journey changes completely.”
A shorter trip is the stronger one. In seven days the team can see two regions without any problem, with three hotels, five days of experiences and two of rest. Twenty days open space for more regions and more stillness. Behind both sits one rule. “You need at least three nights in each hub,” says Oliver. A hub is a base. You unpack, and you explore the region from there on foot.
The Hollywood curve
The shape of the days follows what Oliver calls the Hollywood curve. It is how Northern Spain Travel structures what its travellers feel, and places the strongest experiences along the rhythm of the journey.
It starts with recovery. “When you arrive from a long flight, you want to begin with a good base that gives you time to recover,” Oliver says. “Once the jet lag is gone and you are more settled, you are ready to enjoy the peak moments at one hundred per cent.”
Then the journey builds. The first strong days are the deep cultural ones: the last family of fishermen in a village, a coastal cliff read with a geologist, restaurants that exist nowhere else, time with chefs and winemakers. “These are days of growth, of discovery,” he says.
Then it eases. “After a few days like that, what we always look for is a balance again, a moment to relax and enjoy where you are,” Oliver says. “Not only the people, but the places and the landscapes.”
Then it builds a second time, and this climb works differently. “In this second rise, what we manage to do is bring together everything they have seen so far,” Oliver says. “The experiences, the people who represent the place, the landscapes. They can understand all of it completely.”
The first climb is discovery. The second comes with knowledge. “They already know where they are. They know the surroundings,” he says. “So everything that comes in these last experiences, they enjoy completely, because they see it from a place of knowing, not only of discovering. They arrive with what they learnt and lived in that first stretch.” There are a few experiences through local heroes and large meals that surprise without overdoing it. Then the journey ends quietly, a small calm stretch before going home.
A plan that changed after one call
The couple wrote from Sydney. They wanted to walk stretches of the Camino del Norte and the Picos de Europa, eat slowly and sleep in places with character. They arrived with a plan of five bases of four nights each, walking out and back along the Camino from every base. One of them wrote that “local producers and farm to plate or other slow travel food experiences coupled with walks/hikes is our thing.”
After the first call, the plan changed. The team suggested always walking forwards, so the journey keeps moving and no stretch repeats. The five bases became four hubs, one for each region: Bizkaia, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia. The couple chose to start in San Sebastián on their own. “In the end, we adapt completely to our client,” Oliver says.
Skeleton first, then the decisions
The team builds a skeleton before anything else: where each night is spent, which walk starts from each hub, which days need a transfer. “We always try to build a skeleton first, and then create the details and the important decisions in a second stage, before presenting it for the first time,” says Oliver.
In this case the second stage was shaped by what the couple asked for. They said private guides were a low priority, so the visits are self-guided, with a prepared route, a GPS track and pick-up markers that let any stage be shortened. One of them does not like heights. On the day one walks the Cares Gorge in the Picos de Europa, the other will have a quiet day in the village of Bulnes, on flat paths with no edges. They will meet again for dinner.
Where the wellness comes from
Nothing in the itinerary is labelled wellness, and all of it is. “Everything to do with our journeys is wellness,” Oliver says. “You are in places away from the crowds, quiet places, places with clean air. The food is kilometre zero. The products and the meals are very healthy.”
The itinerary shows what he means. Bulnes can only be reached on foot or by a funicular bored through the mountain. The Lagos de Covadonga are walked downhill, so nobody has to climb back. The Costa da Morte has wild beaches and stone fishing villages. The table is built from what is close: anchovies and bonito in Getaria, blue cheese cured in a cave in Cabrales, trout and eggs bought in the valley, vegetables from a hotel’s own garden.
Then there is the order of things. “It is the combination of physical activity, which creates those endorphins and that sense of wellbeing, and then rest and a great meal,” says Oliver. “That combination is what makes these journeys so unique.” A morning of walking is followed by a long lunch. A long day on the coast is followed by a pool and a spa. The body and the table are planned together.
The people who open the doors
Each day also has a person at its centre. In Getaria, the couple will spend a morning with Manuela and Claudio, mother and son, the last traditional fishing family of the village. In Zumaia, Naiara, a Basque geologist, will read the coastal cliff with them like a book. In Bulnes, Pilar, who works the funicular, will welcome them into a house her family restored. In the Cabrales valleys, a cheesemaker will open a cave where the wheels cure inside the mountain. In Cudillero, Ángeles, a fisherman’s daughter who once ran her own cannery, will walk them through the village.
None of them is new to the team. “They already work with us. They are our local heroes, and they open doors. We know they do, because they have done it for our other clients,” Oliver says. “They are people we trust completely. They represent the territory, with big projects and their own work apart from this.”
What holds it together is friendship. “The relationship we have with them is one of friendship above all,” he says. “That is why we have their trust. Our travellers get to be with people who open up their stories, their hearts and themselves. That is what makes being with them so important.”
The couple will arrange none of it themselves. One person from the team is assigned to them, with a 24-hour line from the first day to the last.
Where it begins
The first step is a conversation, and the pace comes out of it. The rest is built around the person who is listening.
Northern Spain Travel designs private journeys through the Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias, Galicia and beyond.
