After dinner I went onto the terrace, where Suso Martinez, visiting from the city of La Coruña, was musing over a glass of orujo, the local firewater. He dreamt of doing the trip one day and was full of questions. ‘Tomorrow you leave Galicia and cross to Asturias,’ he said, wistfully, nodding across the bay. ‘Here we say Galicia is rich in bread, water and Latin – meaning we have good land, plenty of rain and many priests. It still rains in Asturias, but far less than here.’

All was cosy that first night, with the Transcantábrico parked in a secluded siding. I spent a while mastering the intricacies of the shower, which had enough buttons to keep a 747 pilot busy, then slept the sleep of the just.

Next morning, after the bell and breakfast (croissants from the local bakery), we drove to Ribadeo’s old port, a place with a curious British link: in the Middle Ages, pilgrims from England disembarked here to begin the last stage of their march to Santiago de Compostela. A boat was waiting to take us for a cruise on the estuary, where brawny men grappled with some of the 5,000 kilos of oysters and mussels prised weekly from the clear waters.

Back in town, I passed an old abbey next to the church, where, according to local custom, young brides-to-be offer eggs to the nuns to ensure divine intervention for a rain-free wedding day. We must have been blessed, too, for as the train swept on over the bridge into Asturias, the sun shone down from a blameless sky.

The Sunday Times Travel Magazine - January

BACKGROUND

• Six scenic rail journeys in Spain

• A week on the rails in Spain

• On the rails in Spain

• Tackling Spain by train

Continental holidays by rail

Clean, comfy and convenient – trains are a great way to travel, says Stephen Bleach

• 100 summer holidays for '08

Man in Seat 61's eight great train escapes

Mark Smith founded the much vaunted rail website. Here's his top trips

• Your Top 10 rail travel questions

Train is the only way to travel

Jeremy Lazell presents the perfect antidote to the grind of traffic jams: 12 of the greatest rail journeys on the planet

• What's your favourite rail trip?

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• Six scenic rail journeys in Spain

In my compartment, windows open and curtains flapping, I tried to read but the view was irresistible, the track swinging by empty beaches where a crisp surf broke onto the sands.

We reached the tiny fishing port of Luarca in time for lunch. Brightly painted houses lined steep streets down to the sea, and at the harbour’s edge, the catch of the day had been spread out, glinting in the light: large ray, satanically gaping monkfish and sea bass, all up for noisy auction in an echoing hall. Mesmerised, I almost couldn’t tear myself away to the cool, airy Restaurante Villa Blanca. But I was glad I did – it was the best seafood restaurant in town.

Over langostinos in crab sauce, the owner recounted how many Asturianos had made their fortunes in Latin America in the 20th century. On their return to Spain, they built fine houses, painting them in garish colours as a nod to the country that had made them rich. Outside in the sun, Walter looked up from the latest SMS from his banker in Geneva and did a quick tally. The vivid-blue Argentinians, he told us, were clearly the most prosperous people in town – closely followed by blood-red Cubans.

The landscape was slowly changing now as the Transcantábrico rattled east at a leisurely 60kph, maize fields giving way to rolling pastureland dotted with stone-walled farmhouses. Misty hills – the Cordillera Cantábrica – drew closer to the train, then, abruptly, the rural scene was obliterated by the outskirts of Oviedo, where smoke-belching factory chimneys brought us back to the real world. Five minutes later the city was behind us, and we were soon winding through woods seawards to the day’s end in Gijón – once the biggest coal port in northern Spain.

That evening I wandered through the buzzy city centre – where bars and cafes were packed with families – for supper in the Cimadevilla, the ‘top of the town’, perched on a promontory. This is the joy of long train journeys: they offer the keys to several cities, while offering the security of (what now felt like) home. Better still, there was none of the hassle of repacking a suitcase every day.

We had been warned about an early start, and I awoke to the hoot from the locomotive at 6am before drifting back to sleep to the soothing clickety-clack of the wheels as the train retraced its route to Oviedo. As breakfast was served, the Transcantábrico, for the first time, shared a platform with a modern commuter train. It seemed dwarfed by its newer, brasher cousin, but I resisted the urge to give the old Pullman carriages a reassuring pat.

Despite the slightly forbidding brush with industrial Oviedo the night before, the Asturian capital proved to be an elegant mix of leafy modern avenues around a core of narrow cobbled streets and squares. It was just the way Woody Allen described it, arriving in 2002 to be awarded Spain’s prestigious Príncipe of Asturias Award for Arts: ‘Delicious, exotic… and pedestrianised. Like a fairytale.’

I spent a happy hour browsing the old centre, dominated by the Gothic cathedral of San Salvador. King Alfonso was the first to make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela from here in the 9th century, an old man told me proudly, and the city is still an important holy place. ‘Visiting Santiago and not Oviedo,’ he said, ‘is like paying homage to the servant rather than the king!’

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