Walk the meadows and woods among the 40 outdoor sculptures and put your hands on them — touching is allowed

Find Buscando la luz, 8 metres high and 22 tonnes, and Lotura XXXII, 64 tonnes

Go inside Zabalaga, the farmhouse of 1543 Chillida restored, for the work in wood, alabaster and wool

Find the Peine del Viento, Chillida's sculptures on the rocks at the far end of La Concha in San Sebastián

Eduardo Chillida found Zabalaga, a farmhouse of 1543 near Hernani, in ruins, restored it with the architect Joaquín Montero, and laid his work out in the 13 hectares of meadow and wood around it. The museum opened on 16 September 2000, closed at the end of 2010 in the financial crisis and reopened on 17 April 2019. Outside stand 40 sculptures in steel and granite, from Estela V at about a metre high to Lotura XXXII at 64 tonnes, and visitors may touch them; the fragile work in wood, alabaster and wool is kept inside the farmhouse.

Chillida Leku: Sculpture You Are Allowed to Touch

Get a place on the Concha shore or the Paseo Nuevo for one of the two Sundays in September

Work out what a trainera actually is — a Basque coastal fishing boat, thirteen oars and a coxswain

Follow one crew across both days, because the result is the aggregate of the two

Find out how far back it goes: rowed here since 1879, with a women's competition since 2008

Work out why the rivalries are as sharp as they are — these are village crews, not clubs

The Bandera de la Concha has been rowed in San Sebastián bay on the first two Sundays of September since 1879, with a women's competition added in 2008. Traineras are heavy Basque coastal fishing boats, thirteen rowers and a coxswain, and the crews are village crews with real rivalries behind them. It is rowed in two heats of four boats over three nautical miles across two days, and locally it is called the Olympics of rowing. The bay fills with people on the shore and the whole city stops for it.

La Concha: The Rowing Regatta San Sebastián Stops For

Find your first scallop-shell Camino waymark at the Basilica of Santa María del Coro in the Old Town

Walk the coastal stage from San Sebastián to Orio via Ondarreta beach and the Igueldo headland

Get your pilgrim credential stamped at a Camino-registered stop along the way

At Orio, find the waterfront trainera rowing-club boathouse — a reminder that pilgrims once crossed the ría by boat before the modern bridge was built

The coastal Camino de Santiago route begins in San Sebastián and follows the Bay of Biscay west — a harder, wilder alternative to the inland Camino Francés, with daily ascents and descents along cliff paths between fishing towns.

The Camino del Norte: San Sebastián to Orio

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.

San Sebastián and Astigarraga: Pintxos and the Cider-House Txotx

Cross the harbour mouth between San Pedro and San Juan in the small passenger boat

Walk the old village of Pasai Donibane, left unburned when the French took the port in 1794

Look out over the harbour mouth Lafayette sailed out of in April 1777, bound for the American Revolution

Walk up onto the slopes of Mount Jaizkibel above San Juan for the view down into the harbour

Pasaia is a natural harbour behind a mouth less than 200 metres wide, sheltered between Mount Ulía and Mount Jaizkibel, and its two old fishing villages face each other across it: San Pedro on one side, San Juan — Pasai Donibane — on the other. Going round by road is seven kilometres, so people cross in a small boat. The admiral Blas de Lezo was born here in 1689, and in April 1777 the Marquis de Lafayette sailed from San Juan to join the American Revolution. When French troops took Pasaia in 1794, San Juan was not burned, which is why its old village is intact.

Pasaia: A Harbour Mouth You Cross by Boat

Surf the beach, or take a lesson on it, which is what most people here are doing

Come in September for the Rip Curl Pro, which counts towards the world tour

Walk the whole three kilometres of sand and work out why it is called the Queen of Beaches

Find the Iñurritza biotope at the east end, one of very few surviving dune systems on this coast

Find the Palacio de Narros and work out which queens summered in it

Zarautz has the longest beach in the Basque Country at nearly three kilometres, which is why it is called the Queen of Beaches and why it has been the centre of Basque surfing for decades — the Rip Curl Pro Zarautz in September counts towards the world tour. Isabel II summered at the Palacio de Narros facing the sand, and so later did Queen Fabiola of Belgium. At the eastern end, round a golf course, the Iñurritza protected biotope has dunes, marsh and cliff together, one of very few preserved dune systems left on this coast.

Zarautz: The Queen of Beaches

Find the statue of Juan Sebastián Elcano, first man to complete a circumnavigation of the globe, in the town square

At the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum, find Queen Fabiola of Belgium's wedding dress in the permanent collection

Climb Monte San Antón ('El Ratón') for the view back over the harbour

Watch a txakoli poured 'desde lo alto' (from height) at a harbourside bar

Juan Sebastián Elcano of Getaria sailed with Magellan in 1519, and after Magellan was killed in the Philippines it was Elcano who decided to keep going west across the Indian Ocean and brought the Victoria home — the first person to complete a circumnavigation of the earth. Four hundred years later the same town of a few thousand people produced Cristóbal Balenciaga, the couturier Dior called the master of us all. The harbour still lands fish, and the txakoli grown on the slopes behind is poured from a height to give it some fizz.

Getaria: Elcano, Balenciaga and Txakoli

Walk the Citadel's five bastions — San Antón, La Victoria, San Juan, Santa María and Santiago — from the Vuelta del Castillo park

Walk the full 825m of Calle Estafeta, the most famous stretch of the San Fermín bull-running route

Find the Hemingway statue outside the Plaza de Toros

Order a coffee at Café Iruña on Plaza del Castillo, open since 1888

A Renaissance star fortress and a narrow medieval street that becomes the world's most famous bull run for nine days each July — Pamplona outside San Fermín is a quiet walled city with both still there to see.

Pamplona: The Citadel and the Bull-Run Streets

Go into the Centro Botín, Renzo Piano's arts centre on the bay, opened in 2017

Walk round the Magdalena peninsula to the palace built for Alfonso XIII in 1909–1911

Find the royal stables of 1914, built to look like a medieval English village

Look out to the island of Mouro at the mouth of the bay

The Magdalena peninsula guards the entrance to the bay of Santander, and in 1909–1911 the town paid for a palace on it by public subscription as a summer residence for Alfonso XIII — at one point the building committee even bought a Christmas lottery ticket to cover the costs, and lost. The king and his family came every summer until the Second Republic; his stables of 1914 were built to look like a medieval English village. Juan de Borbón sold the palace to the city in 1977, and the 24.5-hectare peninsula is now a public park. On the waterfront by the old town, the Centro Botín, an arts centre by Renzo Piano and Luis Vidal, opened on 23 June 2017.