At the beginner of April of this year I travelled to Madrid for a grand joint Spanish/English Saturday wedding. Requiring all of Sunday to recover I did not set off to the Cantabrian city of Santander until the Monday. Staying with a friend in the barrio of Melendez Alvero I travelled to Madrid’s north station Charmatin catch the Talgo to north cost of Iberia.
To travel by Talgo is an absolute pleasure. Plenty of space in all classes, proper buffet car that doubles as an observation carriage. Whilst it isn’t fine dinning the bocadillos are of a reasonable standard the coffee drinkable.
For the engineering minded, gauge changing technology is employed by these trains allowing the Talgos the flexibility to use both Spanish broad gauge and Stephenson (Standard) gauge track combing the speed of Spain’s ever growing high speed rail network whilst keeping the reach of the domestic network.
Arriving on a wet afternoon and taking advantage of it being low season I book into a very pleasant hostel over looking the Bay of Santander in a surviving building of Santander’s devastating fires that has left the old town bereft of fine architecture.
