The Sequoia Park of Cabezón de la Sal is a forest of 848 giant sequoias up to 36 metres tall, planted in the 1940s over 2.5 hectares beside the A-8. Entry is free, no booking is needed, and a circular route of about two kilometres covers it in under an hour.
Fifty minutes from Bareyo, right where the Cantabrian motorway leaves the coast to head inland towards Comillas, there's a plot of trees that shouldn't really be there. They're Californian sequoias, a species that in its native habitat grows past 80 metres, planted right in the heart of Cantabria long before anyone thought of nature tourism. The result, eight decades on, is a dense, silent forest that surprises anyone setting foot in it for the first time.
You don't need to be a tree expert to notice the difference in scale: the straight, reddish trunks disappear upward, the light filters down softened, and the ground, cushioned by fallen needles, muffles every step. The silence is different too from that of a native Cantabrian forest: because it was planted in such a regular grid, there's barely any undergrowth, giving an almost cathedral-like acoustic under the canopy. It's a short stop, under an hour, that fits well into a route towards the western coast or as a breather on the way back from the Picos de Europa.
The sequoias of Cabezón de la Sal: a post-war forestry experiment that became a forest
The plot was planted in the second half of the 1940s, when the newly created State Forestry Heritage body (1941) was looking for timber species that could replace native ones for industrial production. Technicians imported giant sequoia seeds from California and set them out in a regular grid, about three metres apart, across 2.5 hectares of Mount Cabezón. The timber experiment was never exploited, but the forest survived: today 848 specimens remain, with an average height of 36 metres and an average girth of 1.6 metres. In 2003, the Government of Cantabria declared it a Natural Monument under Decree 41/2003, adding it to the region's Network of Protected Natural Areas.
The two-kilometre circular route through the forest
A signposted trail leaves from the car park and loops around the plot over about two kilometres, with wooden boardwalk sections in the wettest areas. The ground is practically flat, so it takes about 40-45 minutes at an unhurried pace, and it's perfectly manageable with children or a pushchair on the dry stretches. It's worth wearing closed shoes if it's rained in the previous days, since the ground holds moisture under the tree canopy. There are no facilities inside the forest — no café, no shop — so it's a purely nature-focused visit, with nothing to distract from the walk itself. If you like stringing hikes together, our guide to hiking routes near Bareyo gathers four more routes in the area worth adding to the list.
How to get there from Bareyo
The most direct access is via the A-8: take exit 249, signposted La Virgen/Comillas/Cabezón de la Sal, then the CA-135 road that links Cabezón de la Sal with Comillas. Less than a kilometre along that road, the forest car park appears, with plenty of space even in high season. From Bareyo it's just over 50 minutes by car, and since the plot sits right on the road to Comillas, it's easy to pair the visit with an afternoon in the town or with El Capricho de Gaudí without much of a detour.
What you need to know
Free entry, no set hours and no booking required. The car park is free and just a few metres from the start of the trail. There's no café or shop inside the forest, so it's worth bringing water on a hot day, and it's worth avoiding the middle of the day in high summer, when the car park fills up sooner. It's a plan of under an hour, ideal for combining with a longer day along Cantabria's western coast or in the Pasiego Valleys. It can be visited with a dog on a lead and with a pushchair on the sections without a boardwalk.
Walking among trunks a metre and a half around, planted eighty years ago just metres from the motorway, is one of those Cantabrian surprises you won't find on a postcard.
The Sequoia Park works just as well as a main excursion as it does as an hour-long stop within a longer day along the western coast. If you're staying at Bareyo Residences, you already have the advantage of starting from the area with the best access to the A-8 towards Comillas, so the logistics are simple even if the forest is just one of three or four stops for the day. For anyone already looking at dates for a quieter getaway, September 2027 is starting to have room on our availability calendar.
