Turismo Valle de Mena

Idiomas

Accesos directos

Buscador

Patrimony

Historic Routes

Secondary Route for the Camino de Santiago. An alternative to the main Camino de Santiago runs through the valley possibly used by pilgrims who, on arriving at the Cantabrian coast, decided to travel inland through Mena and other municipalities of the Merindades county until rejoining the main, or French, route in “La Meseta”. The clearest evidence of the use of this path is found in the iconographic reports in the Romanic churches, San Lorenzo de Vallejo and Santa Maria de Siones, which show scallop shells and pilgrims with Jacobean features.
The Ordunte Path. The roadway which runs along the basin of the river Ordunte and which was mentioned above, in the section dedicated to the stamp of Rome, along with its disputed origins. While folklore claims that the path is Roman, new revisionist theories, proposed by archeologists and experts in Roman road-building technique, maintain that the path cannot pre-date the seventeenth century. In either case, we are dealing with a historic roadway used over centuries by locals and travellers between La Meseta and the Cantabrian ports. It is likely that from the seventeenth century onwards the route became a Royal Road and locals were charged with its maintenance and upkeep by Royal Decree. These roadways were also known as ‘caminos de herradura’ – horseshoe roads – in reference to the fact that they were paved to facilitate the passage of horses and other beasts of burden.

email:turismomena@valledemena.es