Find the Jurassic dinosaur footprints on the rocks of the beach at low tide

Watch the small boats come in to the harbour and its fish market

Walk up through the San Miguel and San Roque quarters and work out where Charles V is supposed to have landed

Walk out to the Tazones lighthouse on the headland

Tazones is a fishing village of about 250 people between two headlands on the coast of Villaviciosa, its houses stepped up the slope from the harbour, and it has been one of the Most Beautiful Villages in Spain since 2019. It was once a whaling port. It is believed to be where the young Charles I — later the Emperor Charles V — first set foot in Spain, arriving from Flanders in 1517, and the landing is commemorated every year at the fiestas of San Roque. On the rocky shore of its beach are Jurassic dinosaur footprints, part of the Costa de los Dinosaurios.

Tazones: The Fishing Village Where Charles V First Landed

Go to Tazones and find the house with the carved facade marking where Charles I came ashore in 1517

Go into a llagar during pressing season and find out how Asturian cider is actually made

Learn to pour it yourself — from arm's length, a couple of fingers at a time, drunk straight away

Work out why the pour matters and what it is doing to the cider

Get to Rodiles beach at the mouth of the ría, which is one of the best waves in northern Spain

In 1517 a storm pushed the fleet carrying the young Charles I of Spain off course for Santander and put him ashore at Tazones, the fishing port of Villaviciosa — his first landing in the country he had just inherited, in a village he had never heard of. Villaviciosa is the apple capital of Asturias and the centre of the cider industry: llagares pressing the fruit, cider poured from a height to break the surface and drunk immediately, and twenty-eight kilometres of coast behind it with Rodiles among the best surf beaches in northern Spain.

Villaviciosa: The Emperor Landed by Mistake

Visit the Museo del Jurásico de Asturias (MUJA) in Colunga, opened in 2004 in a building shaped like a giant dinosaur footprint

Walk the Playa de la Griega at low tide to find the dinosaur footprints on the rock platform

Follow the coast to Lastres, the fishing village on Asturias's Jurassic coast

Between Gijón and Ribadesella the Jurassic rock reaches the shore, and the flat platforms at the foot of the cliffs carry hundreds of dinosaur footprints — some of the largest sauropod tracks anywhere, printed into what was a tidal flat 150 million years ago and exposed at low tide. This is one of the most important dinosaur track sites in the world. The museum at Colunga was built in 2004 in the shape of a three-toed footprint, which is either clever or very silly depending on where you stand, and holds the finds from the whole coast.

The MUJA and La Griega: Dinosaur Tracks at Colunga

Paddle the Arriondas to Ribadesella run yourself — the river is open all summer and outfitters rent everything

Come for the race on the first Saturday of August after the 2nd and watch the noon start — paddles locked in a frame that releases when the light goes green, after Dionisio de la Huerta's verses are read out

Ride the Tren Fluvial from Arriondas, which runs beside the river with stops to get out and watch

Find out how it started: a few friends going down the river for fun in 1929, fixed at this course in 1932

Finish at Ribadesella and work out how twenty kilometres of river feels from inside a boat

In 1929 Dionisio de la Huerta and a few friends paddled down the Sella for the fun of it. They repeated it in 1930 and 1931, fixed the start and finish at Arriondas and Ribadesella in 1932, and turned it into a race with thirteen paddlers. It now runs twenty kilometres down the river on the first Saturday of August following the 2nd, has been a Festival of International Tourist Interest since 1980, and finishes under the bridge at Ribadesella. Renfe runs a Tren Fluvial down the valley beside the race so the crowd can follow the boats.

Descenso del Sella: Twenty Kilometres of Canoes

Go into Tito Bustillo and find the main panel of horses and deer

Work out how it was found: young cavers in 1968, and who the cave is named after

Walk the seafront and find the indiano houses built with American money

Be at the bridge in August for the finish of the Descenso del Sella

Find the dinosaur footprints on the rocks along this coast, which are signposted from the town

A group of young cavers found the painted gallery at Tito Bustillo in 1968 and named it after one of their number who died on a later expedition. It holds Palaeolithic painting of the first rank — a main panel of horses and deer in red and black, and a separate chamber of vulval engravings — and it is part of the Altamira World Heritage listing. The town sits where the Sella reaches the sea, so it is also the finish of the Descenso del Sella every August, and it has a seafront of indiano mansions built with money from the Americas.

Ribadesella: A Cave, a River and a Race

Stand under the so-called Roman bridge and find out that it is medieval, and that everybody calls it Roman anyway

Work out what happened here: the capital of the kingdom of Asturias from 722 until 774, the only Christian state left in Iberia

Find the cross hanging beneath the central arch of the bridge — a copy of the Victory Cross, which began as the oak cross Pelayo carried at Covadonga

Go into the chapel of Santa Cruz, raised over a dolmen of the third millennium BC by King Favila and Queen Froiluba and consecrated on 27 October 737 to hold Pelayo's cross

Drink sidra poured properly — from arm's length, a couple of fingers at a time, drunk immediately

After the victory at Covadonga in 722 Pelayo made Cangas de Onís his capital, reusing the Roman settlement already there, and it stayed the capital of the kingdom of Asturias until 774 — which makes this small town on the Sella the first seat of the only Christian kingdom left in Iberia. The famous humpbacked bridge over the river is universally called the Roman bridge and is not: it was built in the Middle Ages. Pelayo's tomb is up the valley at Covadonga.

Cangas de Onís: The First Capital of Christian Spain

Drink at a sidrería on Calle Gascona, Oviedo's 'Boulevard of Cider'

Pour a culete of cider the Asturian way, holding the bottle high above your head so the stream hits the glass and aerates the cider

Walk up to the Plaza de la Catedral and look at the Gothic tower of San Salvador, finished in the mid-16th century

Asturias drinks around forty million litres of cider a year and it is poured, not served. The bottle is held at full arm's length above the head and the glass at hip height, so the stream falls a metre or more and breaks on the side of the glass — that aeration is the whole point, because the cider is still, dry and sharp, and without it it tastes flat. You get a couple of fingers at a time, a culete, and you drink it straight down and throw the last drop on the floor. Calle Gascona in Oviedo is a whole street of places doing it.

Oviedo: The Cider Boulevard of Calle Gascona

Take the waters at the Baños de Fitero, in use since the Roman settlement of Tudején

Go into Santa María la Real, founded in 1140 on a donation from Alfonso VII by monks from Escaladieu

Find out what Raymond of Fitero raised at Calatrava, and that he never got this monastery back

Work out what the name means and which two kingdoms and two dioceses met here

Find the older bath structure underneath the 19th-century spa buildings

The name Fitero means frontier, because in the 12th century the monastery here sat on the line between Castile and Navarre and between the dioceses of Calahorra and Tarazona. Saint Raymond of Fitero founded the monastery with Cistercians from the abbey of Escaladieu in the high Pyrenees, on a donation from Alfonso VII in 1140. He then raised a Cistercian militia, took it to Calatrava, and out of it came the Military Order of Calatrava. He never got his own monastery back: his monks were beaten and driven to Calahorra, a second Cistercian community arrived in 1161 under a new abbot, and Raymond died in exile at Ciruelos. Downstream on the Alhama are the baths, in use since Roman Tudején, now a working spa on hot mineral water with a Moorish bath structure underneath the 19th-century buildings.

Fitero: Monastery, Frontier, Baths

Learn to spot an indiano house: the palm in the garden is the giveaway

Find the school, the fountain or the cemetery an indiano also paid for in the same village

Work out where the money came from — Cuba, Mexico, Argentina — and what it cost to get it

Go into one that is open as a museum or a hotel and look at what was brought back

Work out why so many are on this particular stretch of coast and not inland

From the 19th century into the 20th, people left the Asturian and Cantabrian coast in enormous numbers for Cuba, Mexico and Argentina, and a proportion came back rich. What they built is unmistakable: brightly painted mansions with galleries and towers, set in gardens planted with imported palms — a palm in the garden is the reliable sign — often alongside a school or a fountain they also paid for, because returning as a benefactor was part of the point. Whole villages along this coast are shaped by them.