Santiago de Compostela – Bilbao

The Costa Verde Express journey from Santiago de Compostela to Bilbao is a six-day, five-night odyssey through the lush heart of northern Spain, tracing the Atlantic seaboard across four distinct regions: Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, and the Basque Country. Beginning in one of Europe's great pilgrimage cities and culminating in the architecture-defining streets of Bilbao, the route links medieval cathedrals, prehistoric cave art, rugged clifftop villages, and the dramatic peaks of the Picos de Europa — a concentration of cultural and natural heritage rarely matched on any rail journey in the world.

Aboard the Costa Verde Express — formerly known as the Transcantábrico Clásico — guests travel in elegant Grand Class cabins with private en-suite bathrooms and double beds, dining in the restaurant car on regional specialities accompanied by local wines. The train rests in each town overnight, allowing unhurried coach excursions by day to sites that lie just beyond the rail line: the Picos de Europa and the Cabrales area, the Taramundi area with its traditional crafts, and the Altamira Neocave with its breathtaking Palaeolithic reproductions. Multilingual guides accompany the journey throughout.

This is slow travel at its finest: a deliberate, immersive crossing of "Green Spain" that reveals the verdant coast in full, from the granite spires of the Cathedral of Santiago to Frank Gehry's titanium curves of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Every meal, excursion, and museum entrance is included, leaving guests free to focus entirely on discovery.

Santiago de Compostela

Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, Santiago de Compostela has drawn pilgrims from across Europe for over a thousand years. Its Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, built above the reputed tomb of St James the Apostle, anchors one of the most dramatic squares in Europe — the Praza do Obradoiro — flanked by the baroque Parador de los Reyes Católicos, the Rajoy Palace, and the Gothic Colegio de San Jerónimo. The city's medieval lanes shelter Romanesque churches, covered markets, and a vibrant university culture that keeps it alive year-round.

Asturias: Oviedo, Gijón & Luarca

Oviedo, capital of the Principality of Asturias, contains a concentration of pre-Romanesque monuments — the churches of Santa María del Naranco, San Miguel de Lillo, and San Julián de los Prados — that UNESCO recognises as outstanding examples of a style unique to ninth-century Christian Spain. The Gothic Cathedral of San Salvador, home to the Shroud of Oviedo, dominates the Casco Antiguo. Gijón, the region's largest city, combines Roman heritage (the Campo Valdés baths) with a lively seafront promenade. Luarca, the White Town of the Green Coast, is a photogenic harbour of whitewashed houses and fishing boats, birthplace of Nobel laureate Severo Ochoa.

Picos de Europa & Cantabria

The Picos de Europa National Park, one of Spain's oldest and most spectacular, rises to over 2,600 metres within sight of the Atlantic coast. The village of Arenas de Cabrales is the base for exploring the limestone massif and sampling Cabrales cheese, aged in the park's natural caves and arguably Spain's most characterful blue cheese. Santillana del Mar is widely considered the finest preserved medieval village in Spain, its honey-coloured stone mansions and Romanesque collegiate church unchanged in essence since the Middle Ages. The adjacent Altamira Neocave brings Palaeolithic art — bison, hands, abstract signs painted 14,000 years ago — to life in a stunning full-scale reproduction that protects the fragile original cave.

Santander & Bilbao

Santander, built on a peninsula jutting into one of northern Spain's most beautiful natural bays, is a city of wide beaches, Modernista architecture, and refined Cantabrian cuisine. The Belle Époque Casino, the seafront palaces, and the fish market all repay exploration. Bilbao is one of the great urban regeneration stories of the late twentieth century: a former industrial port reinvented through culture and design. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry and opened in 1997, remains a landmark of contemporary architecture and houses a permanent collection of modern and contemporary art alongside world-class temporary exhibitions. The medieval Casco Viejo and its famous pintxos bars offer a vivid counterpoint to the sleek waterfront.