Excursions
All of our excursions will take place during the weekend, primarily on Sundays but also on Saturdays, depending on availability of the places visited. We will hire the services of a professional bus company which will be available for us the whole day and will take us to the locations carefully planned by our team. All the activities will be realised under the care and supervision of our tutors (in case of the summer camps) and at least one representative from SíC, we have agreements with touristic guides during the cultural activities and monitors for the sportive activities, as well as all needed insurances. In case of the Summer camps, two or four of these excursions will be chosen by you and your group in advance. At SíC we are commited with giving you a safe and advantageous enviroment in which you will be able to discover the best of what the north of Spain has to offer, let us surprise you with this five unforgettable trips!
Early in the morning we will depart, from Santander to Santillana del Mar. Very close to this Cantabrian town is the famous Altamira Cave. Since 1985, this cave has been a Unesco World Heritage Site, making it a mandatory and unique visit in Spain. His paintings have been described, in a sympathetic way, as The Sistine Chapel of Rock Art and it is the most extraordinary manifestation of this Palaeolithic art, according to many prehistorians. Here we can discover the great artistic capacity of our ancestors and we can admire the great quality and beauty of such an outstanding national monument. Entry in the cace is limited to five people a week to ensure its conservation, because of this, we will visit the Altamira National Museum and Research Center, an informative complex that includes an identical real-size replica of the caves. Inside we will discover the detailed cave paintings and feel like the hunters who inhabited them 18,000 years ago. We will also learn the history of the discovery of the cave, which occurred in 1868.
Next, we will begin a tour of Santillana del Mar, a charming medieval town known as "the town of the three lies", since it is neither holy (santa), nor flat (llana), nor has a sea (del mar). On our tour we will walk through its cobbled streets and its important medieval buildings to the impressive Collegiate Church of Santillana del Mar. The latter is considered one of the jewels of Romanesque in Spain. After the walk with our guides, you will enjoy free time to explore the town at your own pace, take beautiful photographs and even make some purchases before returning to Santander.
We will go to the Nature Park of Cabárceno in the morning with a private bus, we will be mostly walking inside of the park but the bus will take us to some distant locations, due to the fact that the area used to be an open-cast iron extraction mine and it covers an area with more than 750 hectares, making it the most extense animal park in Europe. We will spend most of the day observing close to one thousand specimens of more than one hundred different species of animals from the five continents living in semi-freedom, such as elephants, cheetahs, giraffes, orangutans, lions.... One of the characteristics of Cabárceno is that the large species occupy enormous spaces, creating an enviroment much closer to their original surroundings than, of couse, that of an urban zoo or a safari park. Also it is important to say that the flora of the park counts with more than 100 different species of trees, "Botanical Routes" have been set up conecting the various animals´ enclosures and this makes the experience of walking the park something trully magical and unique.
Some of the activities we will enjoy inside of the park include amazing demonstrations by raptor birds or fun spectacles with sealions, we will also take a cable car ride to experience the sensation of flying over the Cabárceno Nature Park and enjoy the impressive views of this karstic landscape, even raching to see Santander and its bay in some moments of the climb. We will be eating lunch and healthy snaks in the park and coming back in the evening to the city.
Laredo and santoña are two villages situated in front of each other and limiting the entrance to a rich bay. The two of them have one of the most beautiful beaches you can find in the atlantic ocean, Salvé (Laredo) and Berria (Santoña), and are the preffered place to spend summer for many Spanish.
We will begin our day visiting Santoña and its famous port, where arguably the best anchovies of the world are brought to land, we will continue the visit with the fortifications under the impresive Buciero mount protecting the entrace to the bay, which saw most of their fighting during the napoleonic wars. After a small tour of the town we will head to the Berria beach, where we will give the option of staying and relaxing in its white sand or making the hike to the "Horse Lighthouse". This walk will take you arround the Buciero mount for two and a half hours, and after some astonishing views you will reach an incredible location with one of the most beautiful lighthouses of Spain.
The day will be completed going to Laredo and riding a horse or a pony by the beach and the forest nearby, with the view of the rich and diverse marshes of Santoña in the sunset.
We will start our day with the bus trip to the village of Ramales and the visit of the Cullalvera cave where we will admire numerous karst formations of great beauty. After this visit we will go to the Collados del Asón Natural Park, located in the Soba valley at an altitude of 600 meters and we will walk along the forest trails and discover the source of the Gándara river. The river rises between meadows and runs through the valley before starting a series of high-speed rapids. A pleasant walk through forests of beech, oak and holm oaks will bring us closer to the source of the river Asón, an impressive waterfall that plunges into the void from more than 50 meters high. After enjoying the landscapes of Asón, we will take you to Ampuero and give you all the necessary for the adventure. For almost three hours you will live this fun experience that will allow you to admire the landscapes that the river crosses while you descend the calm river Asón by canoe.
We will leave in the morning to head for the intimidating "Picos de Europa" chain of mountains. For arround two hours we will pass through green lush valleys which will slowly turn into a set of narrow gorges formed by the rivers of the region, the main Deva river will lead our road between large, almost vertical walls of rock, some of which are more than 600 meters hight.
Our first stop in this mountainous region will be the medieval village of Potes, we will let you some free time to explore its streets and visit places such as the "Casa del Oso Pardo" or the "Torre del Infantado" and discover its typical products. After this charming visit we will make a short but steep hike to the monsastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, which along with Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela is one of the holy places of Christianity. This remote location in the north of Spain gained its fame in the 8th century, when due to the Muslim invasion of the Iberian peninsula, the relic of the Lignum Crucis and the remains of the Saint Toribio were transported here. The Lignum Crucis is the Largest piece of the cross where Christ died, and since this event uncountable pilgrims have made their way to the valley of Liébana. After gaining some strenght and enjoying the views of the Picos de Europa, we will come back down to Potes and into the bus, heading to the final destination of the day.
At the end of the Liébana Valley and under the highest peaks of the Picos de Europa Massif, we will find Fuente Dé, a small village very popular between mountaneers and nature lovers, here we will ride in its cableway, with 1150 meters and climbing a height of 753 meters, it is considered the longest single cableway of Europe. In this dream location we will spend the rest of the day accompanied by the serenity of the most impresive mountain views in the north of Spain before coming back to Santander having recharged our energies with this vibrating excursion.
