My Client Is 88. She Just Took the Best Trip of Her Life. | Asturias, Northern Spain

She had been to Spain four times.

Andalusia. Madrid. The Costa del Sol. She knew she loved Spain the way you know you love a person — deeply, without needing to explain it. But this time she wanted something different. Something quieter. Something that felt like a discovery rather than a destination.

She found it in Asturias.

And she came home saying it was unlike anywhere she had ever been in Spain — or, honestly, anywhere at all.

Green Spain. Yes, really.

Most people picture Spain in ochre and gold. Dry hills, white villages, blazing summer heat.

Asturias is none of those things.

This is the northern coast, hugging the Bay of Biscay — and it is green. Deeply, almost impossibly green. Rolling hills, misty mornings, coastline that looks more like Ireland than Seville. Warm and sunny during the day, cool enough in the evenings that you reach for a light layer. The kind of weather that makes you want to walk everywhere, because the air actually feels good.

Which brings me to the first thing worth knowing about Asturias: you will want to walk. A lot. Down to the sea, along the cliffs, through the old town streets. Pack comfortable shoes and plan to use them. ✈️

Cudillero — The Village Worth the Journey

Fly into Asturias Airport in Oviedo and head straight for Cudillero.

It is a small fishing village built into a hillside above a natural harbour — the kind of place that looks almost too picturesque to be real. Colourful houses stacked up the slopes. Fishing boats in the water below. The smell of the sea and something cooking somewhere you can't quite locate.

My client loved it immediately.

One practical note, and I share this because it's exactly the kind of thing I exist to tell you: skip the rental car for this leg. Cudillero's narrow streets and genuinely scarce parking turned what should have been a simple arrival into two parking tickets and a frustrating afternoon. Uber has recently become available in the area — use it. Save the rental car for exploring the wider countryside, where you'll want the freedom. In the village itself, your feet are the right vehicle.

Walk down to the harbour. Sit somewhere with a view of the water. Order whatever they're serving. That's the whole plan, and it's a good one.

The Celtic Connection Nobody Expects

Here is the thing about Asturias that stops people mid-sentence when they hear it: this part of Spain has deep Celtic roots.

Ireland is directly across the sea from Cudillero. And the cultural thread between them is not just geographic coincidence — it's real, and audible. The traditional instrument of Asturias is the gaita — bagpipes. Not a cousin of bagpipes. Bagpipes. If you hear music drifting through a village square in Asturias and think for a moment that you've somehow ended up in County Clare, you haven't lost your mind. You've just found one of Europe's most unexpected cultural connections.

It adds something to the place that's hard to articulate. A feeling of being somewhere genuinely layered — Celtic and Spanish and coastal and ancient all at once.

Oviedo — More Than a Stopover

My client spent a couple of days in Oviedo, the regional capital, and found it genuinely worth the time.

She stayed in a bed and breakfast converted from an old farmhouse — and was surprised to find it completely modern inside. Think beautifully renovated, excellently appointed, more like a boutique hotel than a country B&B. Asturias has a way of doing that: wrapping something old around something very well done.

The food in Oviedo was one of her highlights. Fresh sandwiches on real bread. Salads made with ingredients that tasted like they'd arrived that morning. Nothing complicated — just good produce, honestly prepared, everywhere she looked.

But what she talked about most was the cathedral.

The Cathedral of San Salvador — and the Cloth from the Tomb

The Cathedral of San Salvador in Oviedo dates to the 9th century — built around 802 AD, making it one of the oldest standing churches in Spain.

Inside it, in a chapel called the Cámara Santa — the Holy Chamber — is something that stops you.

The Sudarium of Oviedo.

It is a linen cloth, roughly the size of a hand towel, believed to be the face cloth that covered Jesus in the tomb. Not the Shroud of Turin — that is the full burial cloth, held in Turin, Italy. This is the other one. The one mentioned in the Gospel of John. The one that has been kept in Oviedo since 812 AD, when it was brought here for safekeeping.

Whether you approach it as a person of faith or simply as someone standing in front of something very, very old — the experience of being in that room is something my client described as genuinely moving. Quiet in a way that stays with you.

It is the kind of thing you don't expect to find in a corner of northern Spain that most people have never heard of. And it is exactly why I love this job — because the world keeps being more extraordinary than anyone told you it would be. 🌍

Is Asturias Right for You?

If you love Spain but want to see a side of it that most tourists never find — yes.

If you like coastal walks, cool evenings, and food made with real ingredients — yes.

If you're drawn to places with history you can actually feel — absolutely yes.

Asturias is not a beach resort. It is not a city break. It is something harder to name and, I think, more worth having: a place that gets under your skin quietly, without trying to impress you, and earns a place in your memory that stays there.

My client is 88 years old.

She has travelled to Spain four times. She has seen things most people only read about. She has earned, many times over, the right to stay home.

She did not stay home.

She flew to Asturias, rented a car, walked down to the sea, stood in a 9th century cathedral in front of a cloth from the tomb of Jesus, ate fresh bread in a farmhouse converted into something beautiful, and came home with her eyes still lit up.

I think about that when people tell me they're not sure if now is the right time. If they're too old, too out of practice, too far past the moment when travel felt like something that belonged to them.

It always belongs to you.

That's what Asturias taught my client. And what she, without meaning to, taught me. ✈️

Thinking about northern Spain — or somewhere else entirely that you've been meaning to explore? Send me a message. That's literally what I'm here for.

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