Walk the length of Calle del Laurel and eat the speciality in at least four different bars

Find the Blanco y Negro, the oldest bar in Logroño

Stand in front of Santa María de la Redonda and its twin towers by Martín de Beratúa

Go inside and look up at the Gothic central nave, built between 1516 and 1538

Calle del Laurel in Logroño's old town is little more than 200 metres long, and with the streets around it holds more than 65 bars. The custom is that each one serves one or two specialities — mushrooms, pinchos morunos, pig's ear, patatas bravas — so an evening here is a walk from bar to bar rather than a meal. The street was rebuilt after the town walls came down in 1862, and the demolition of 1878 that finally opened it to the next street produced the Blanco y Negro, still the oldest bar in Logroño. A few minutes away, the twin towers Martín de Beratúa built for the co-cathedral of Santa María de la Redonda are the emblem of the city.

Logroño: Calle del Laurel and the Twin Towers of La Redonda

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

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

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

Get into the free thermal pools at the riverside, where hot spring water meets the Cidacos

Take the waters properly at the spa if you want them at full temperature

Watch the griffon vultures on the cliffs above the village, which is a substantial colony

Walk the greenway along the old Cidacos railway line up the valley

Go on up the valley to the dinosaur track sites towards Enciso

Arnedillo sits in the Cidacos gorge in the Rioja Baja, with hot springs that surface in the riverbed itself — there are free public pools at the water's edge where the thermal water mixes with the river, and a paying spa in the village for the same water at full temperature. The cliffs above hold a large griffon vulture colony, close enough to the road to watch from below. The Cidacos valley is also dinosaur track country, with several signposted sites on the way up towards Enciso.

Arnedillo: Hot Water and Vultures

Be on the Cuesta de los Danzadores for the descent and work out that they are spinning the whole way down

Look at the stilts and the yellow skirts and work out how the costume is meant to work with the spin

Come in July for the Magdalena or in September for the Gracias, which are the two occasions

Walk up to the Ermita de la Magdalena and find the intermittent spring beside it

Work out why this is called the oldest folk tradition in La Rioja

Anguiano's stilt dancers are said to be the oldest folk tradition in La Rioja. Eight men in yellow skirts, on stilts about half a metre high, spin down the Cuesta de los Danzadores — a steep cobbled street running from the church to the Plaza Mayor — rotating the whole way, held up only by momentum, with the crowd packed on both sides. They do it for the Magdalena in July and again at the Gracias in September. It looks impossible and people do get hurt.

Anguiano: Dancing Down a Hill on Stilts

Find the cave where, after testimony described it as a night-time meeting place, the 1610 trial investigated 53 people for witchcraft

Walk inside the cave — a natural tunnel 120m long — following the Olabidea stream, known locally as "Infernuko erreka" ("Hell's stream" in Basque)

Visit the Zugarramurdi Witchcraft Museum, which documents the trial and its six executed victims

The Basque witch trials opened at Logroño in January 1609, and the first phase ended in 1610 with an auto-da-fé against thirty-one of the accused, five or six of whom were burned. The cave they were said to have met in is a natural tunnel 120 metres long with a stream running through it that locals still call Infernuko erreka, hell's stream. What matters as much is what happened next: the junior inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías was sent to examine it, spent 1611 travelling the country under an Edict of Grace, and concluded there was nothing there.

Zugarramurdi: The Witches' Cave and the Inquisitor Who Doubted

Take the summer boat from Vigo to the Cíes Islands in the Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park, and swim at Praia de Rodas, called the best beach in the world by The Guardian in 2007

Walk to the lighthouse on the Illa do Faro, the middle island of the Cíes, and carry out any litter, since the islands have no waste bins

Walk the Rodas sandbar that joins Monteagudo to the Illa do Faro

The Atlantic Islands of Galicia became a national park in 2002 and the Cíes are the best known of them — three granite islands across the mouth of the Ría de Vigo, with cliffs over a hundred metres on the Atlantic side and a beach on the sheltered side that The Guardian called the best in the world in 2007. Visitor numbers are capped, you need a permit, and there are no bins, so whatever you take you carry out.