Here you will be able to find useful tips for your everyday life
as a volunteer or for your stay as a visitor in Colindres. Let’s go!
Travel
From Colindres there are regular bus connections to Santander and Bilbao, although from Laredo (2 minutes by bus, 10 minutes by bike, 25 minutes walking) there are busses leaving much more frequently. It is truly recommendable to buy an orange public transportation card (“Transporte de Cantabria”) since you can charge it with an amount of money of your choice and pay cashless on the bus or the bus company’s counters. On each journey you can save up to 20% of the normal price by using this card which, of course, is rechargeable. There are also some trains connecting nearby Treto with Santander but they go rather slow, less frequent and they stop in every village. If you want to enjoy the landscape one day, you should definitely try them out – if you are in a hurry you better don’t count on them.
Shop
Although it seems to be a trivial thing to do the shopping, this overview may help you to distinguish a bit between the different offers and supermarkets. In Spanish city centres or villages there are usually smaller groceries which close during the siesta time from 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. In Colindres for example there are “Lupa” and “Coviran”. Some of them also open on Sundays and provide basic products for everyday necessities. The bigger supermarkets can rather be found outside the urban areas in industrial estates. In Colindres and Laredo there are branches of big supermarket chains such as “Lidl”, “Aldi”, “BM” and “Mercadona”. As a volunteer at Colindres Youth Way you will surely not struggle with the shopping.
Do sports
In Colindres there are plenty of opportunities to do sports. Besides the public pool and gym next to the football pitch, there are several private gyms, running routes along the seaside promenade and also surfing schools or beach sports offers. Of course, if you prefer to exercise more leisurely, you can go swimming to Laredo beach or some other villages nearby.
Fill your free time
Since as a volunteer you won’t work in a classical 9-to-5-job you will probably have some free time during the week and especially on the weekends. If you are not too much into sports, you should definitely check out the public library, a very calm place to sit down, relax and just read a book or a newspaper. Of course you should try to discover new places around Colindres and to explore the environs. Cantabria’s landscape is captivating!
Explore
Besides the bigger cities in the north of Spain, as there are Bilbao, Santander, Burgos and many more, there are also smaller towns and sights to visit nearby. Cantabria has a great variety of archaeological, prehistoric and medieval exhibitions and museums. Santillana del Mar for example offers an entirely preserved medieval town centre and an excavation site in Puente Viesgo gives access to cave paintings dating back to 40,000 B.C. But also the region’s landscape is diverse, ranging from white beaches to snowy mountain peaks. One of Spain’s highest mountain ranges, the Picos de Europa which offer wonderful hiking routes, can be found in the southwest of Cantabria on the border to Asturias. Another beautiful destination is San Sebastian in the Basque Country.
We hope these tips will help you to enjoy your time at Colindres at the maximum! 😉
Colindres Youth Way 2014/16 