Walk the Barrio de la Estación in Haro, the station quarter of seven bodegas that includes López de Heredia (1877) and CVNE (1879), and tour one of them

Visit the Vivanco Museum of Wine Culture in Briones, opened in 2004

Walk up through the hilltop village of Briones to the church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción

Rioja has been making wine since at least the 9th century — there is a document from 873 recording vines here — and it was the first Spanish region to get the top qualified designation. What makes Haro worth the trip specifically is the Barrio de la Estación: seven historic bodegas clustered round the railway station, put there in the 1870s because the line meant they could ship to France when phylloxera had wiped out Bordeaux. López de Heredia opened in 1877 and CVNE in 1879 and both are still in the same quarter.

Haro's Station Quarter and the Vivanco Museum at Briones

Haro and the Rioja

Richard and Jackie

Follow in the footsteps of Richard and Jackie on their northern Spain adventure: a month across the top of the country, seventeen stops from a castle town in Burgos to the Galician rías, mostly on aires at six to ten euros a night.

Northern Spain End to End: The Pyrenees, the Bardenas and the Galician Coast

Come on 29 June, wear white, and accept that the white will not survive the morning

Walk out to the Riscos de Bilibio where it happens, at the point the Ebro enters La Rioja

Find out who Felices de Bilibio was — the 6th-century hermit who taught San Millán and died on this spot

Do a bodega tour in the town and taste Rioja where it is actually made

Work out the ageing classifications — crianza, reserva, gran reserva — and taste the same wine across all three

On the morning of 29 June, the feast of St Peter, the people of Haro dress in white with a red neckerchief, walk or ride six kilometres north to the Riscos de Bilibio where the Ebro enters La Rioja, and spend the morning drenching each other in red wine until everybody is purple. It is a Festival of National Tourist Interest. The rest of the year Haro is simply the capital of Rioja Alta and one of the densest concentrations of serious wineries in Spain, most of them within walking distance of each other.

Haro and the Battle of Wine

Be in the village for a procession and understand before you go what you are actually going to see

Find out why this survived here when public flagellation was suppressed everywhere else in Spain

Work out what a disciplinante has to be to take part: adult, male, and vouched for by a priest

Climb to the castle and the fortified church on the rock above the Ebro

Work out what the Cofradía de la Santa Vera Cruz is and that it has organised this from the start

At Easter and on a few other days, men in white robes with hoods walk in procession through San Vicente de la Sonsierra scourging their own backs with a rope discipline, and are then pricked to draw the bruising off. It is the only place in Spain where the penance is still practised, it has always been run by the Cofradía de la Santa Vera Cruz, and it was recognised as of National Tourist Interest in 2005. Disciplinantes must be adult, male, and vouched for by a priest as a Christian acting in good faith. The village sits on a rock above the Ebro with a castle and a fortified church.

San Vicente de la Sonsierra: The Picaos

Go into the cathedral and find the live cock and hen kept in the coop on the wall

Learn the saying and then find out what the story behind it actually is

Find out who Domingo García was and what he built here to make the Camino passable

Climb the free-standing Baroque bell tower, which is separate from the cathedral

Find out why Barcelos in Portugal tells almost exactly the same story about a cockerel

Domingo García built a bridge over the Oja, a hospital and a pilgrim hostel to make this stretch of the Camino passable, and the town is named after him. The story that made it famous is the miracle of the cock and hen: a pilgrim was wrongly accused of theft and hanged, and Domingo proved his innocence by making a roasted hen fly up off the plate. To this day a live cock and hen are kept in a coop inside the cathedral, and the saying runs that in Santo Domingo de la Calzada the hen crowed after it was roasted. Portugal tells almost the same story about the cockerel of Barcelos.

Santo Domingo de la Calzada: The Hen That Crowed After Roasting

Stand back and work out what the three colours of the titanium are meant to represent

Go down into the original cellars of 1858 and find the oldest bottles in the collection

Walk up into Elciego village and look back at the building from the church

Decide for yourself whether it belongs here, which is an argument people in the Rioja Alavesa actually have

Taste the wine, which is the reason any of this exists

Guillermo Hurtado founded Marqués de Riscal at Elciego in 1858 — the oldest winery in Álava — after importing nine thousand French vine cuttings to experiment alongside the Tempranillo and Graciano already here. In 2006 the estate became the Ciudad del Vino, and the building everyone comes for is Frank Gehry's, sandstone under a titanium roof: pink for red wine, gold for the netting on a Riscal bottle, silver for the capsule. It holds a hotel and two restaurants and sits in the middle of the vineyards below the village of Elciego, which has nothing else remotely like it. Whether it belongs there is a live argument in the Rioja Alavesa.

Elciego: Gehry in the Vines

Find the cave at the back of the church and work out that the monastery was built onto it, not over it

Walk the royal pantheon and count the kings, queens and infantes in it

Go into the Claustro de los Caballeros, finished in 1517, and look at how thin the stone tracery has been cut

Find out what the king found in the cave in 1044 — an image, a spray of lilies and a bell — and where he himself is buried

Work out what the kingdom of Nájera-Pamplona was and why its royal burials are here

By tradition King García Sánchez III was hunting near Nájera in 1044 when he followed his falcon into a cave and found a small chapel cut in the rock holding an image of the Virgin, a spray of lilies and a bell. The image is called Santa María en la Cueva, the lilies became the monastery's symbol, and the cave is still there at the back of the church. The king was killed at the battle of Atapuerca and buried at the Virgin's feet, inside it. Santa María la Real became the royal pantheon of the kingdom of Nájera-Pamplona, and thirty or so kings, queens and infantes of Navarre, León and Castile are buried in it. The Claustro de los Caballeros was finished in 1517, after the abbey broke from Cluny in 1486, and its tracery is cut extraordinarily thin.

Nájera: The Cave That Became a Royal Pantheon

Go down into a calado under a house and work out how many storeys of cellar are under the street

Work out why every house has one: each family made and kept its own wine here

Walk the walls Sancho the Strong of Navarre built, and find out when the town stopped being Navarrese

Visit one of the modern architect-designed bodegas outside the walls and compare it with the calados

Taste Rioja Alavesa against Rioja Alta and work out what the difference on the ground actually is

Laguardia sits on a rise above the Ebro in the Rioja Alavesa, inside walls that Sancho the Strong of Navarre had built, and underneath it the rock is riddled with calados — hand-dug cellars going down several storeys, one under almost every house, originally for each family to make and keep its own wine. The whole town is essentially hollow. Laguardia and the Rioja Alavesa fell to Castile in 1461 when Henry IV invaded during the Navarrese civil war. It is now surrounded by some of the most ambitious modern wineries in Spain.

Laguardia: A Walled Town on Top of Its Own Cellars

Walk out to the lighthouse of 1853 at the tip of the cape and find out why its foghorn was called the cow

Watch the sun go down into the Atlantic from the end of the Roman world

Climb Monte Facho, where tradition puts the Ara Solis, an altar to the sun

See the Christ with the golden beard in Santa María das Areas, where pilgrims finishing the Camino still stop

Find out what pilgrims traditionally do when they reach the cape — the clothes, the sea and the shell

Cape Finisterre was the end of the known world to the Romans, and tradition says they found an altar to the sun, the Ara Solis, on Monte Facho above it. It is also where many pilgrims carry on to after reaching Santiago. In the church of Santa María das Areas is the Santo Cristo de Fisterra, the Christ with the golden beard, and the pilgrims' customs at the cape are old: burn your clothes, bathe in the sea, take a scallop shell home. A pilgrims' hospital stood in front of the church from 1469. The lighthouse on the cape was built in 1853, and because of the winter fog a foghorn was added in 1888 — the Vaca de Fisterra, the cow of Fisterra.

Fisterra: The End of the Earth and the End of the Camino

Take a pintxos crawl through San Sebastián's Old Town along Calle 31 de Agosto and Fermín Calbetón, trying at least five different bars

Eat at one of San Sebastián's three-Michelin-starred restaurants — Arzak, Akelarre or Martín Berasategui — or one of their more casual sister venues in town

Eat the cider-house menu at a sagardotegi in Astigarraga — cod omelette, steak, Idiazabal with quince and walnuts — and in season catch your cider from the barrel at the call of txotx

San Sebastián's Parte Vieja is packed with pintxo bars along Calle 31 de Agosto and Fermín Calbetón, and the city has more Michelin stars per head than almost anywhere. A few kilometres inland, Astigarraga is the heart of the Basque cider tradition, with most of the sagardotegis clustered round it and Hernani. Basque cider is still, not sparkling. In a traditional cider house you eat a cod omelette, a steak, and Idiazabal cheese with quince and walnuts, and every time someone calls txotx you get up and catch a thin stream from the tap in the barrel as low in the glass as you can. The new cider is opened on 19 January and the season runs until April or May.