Walk from the Santa María Gate to the San Nicolás Gate through the walled old town

Find the balconied fishermen's houses of the Marina quarter, painted in the traditional red, green and blue of Basque boats

Find the 10th-century quadrangular tower at the core of the Castle of Charles V, now the Parador hotel on Plaza de Armas

From the harbour promenade, spot Pheasant Island in the Bidasoa — the world's smallest condominium, which switches sovereignty between Spain and France every six months, and the site of the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees

A walled fishing port on the Bidasoa estuary, facing France across a river that has marked the border since 1659 — and hiding, in the water between the two banks, the world's smallest condominium territory.

Hondarribia: The Border Castle on the Bidasoa

Drive the RD912 from where it crosses the Untxin, up onto the pointe de Socoa 24m above the water, then past the cove called the viviers basques, Haizabia, the Abbadia estate and the baie de Lohia down to Hendaye-Plage

Walk the inland alternative over the first line of hills — the historic clifftop path is closed — and from the ridge look down on the tilted flysch beds and the coves cut into them, as far as the Maison de la Corniche at Asporotsttipi where the path onto the Abbadia estate begins

Walk the path across the 65 hectares of the Domaine d'Abbadia, passing its three houses — Asporotsttipi, Nekatoenea and Larretxea — and climb to the château-observatoire on top of it, the house Antoine d'Abbadie commissioned from Viollet-le-Duc in 1864 after his years in Ethiopia

Take binoculars and look one to two kilometres straight out from the corniche for the Belharra reef, a shoal 14 to 18 m down that throws up waves of up to 20 m on a big winter swell — on the days it works, this is where people come to watch the surfers on it

Finish on the beach at Hendaye and walk back out to the pointe Sainte-Anne to find the concrete the German army left when it built the Corniche into the Atlantic Wall — the eastern end of a line of works that runs all the way back to the pointe de Socoa

The Corniche Basque is a protected stretch of 445 hectares on the communes of Ciboure, Urrugne and Hendaye, where the cliffs run six kilometres from the port of Socoa to Hendaye beach. They are built of flysch — rock laid down in thin alternating beds and then tilted on end — cut into coves and spurs, with pasture, woodland and vines on top and the RD 912 running along the edge.

The Corniche Basque: Flysch Cliffs Between Socoa and Hendaye

Walk the rue Gambetta along the old south wall — the only part of the medieval church still standing — and find the doorway cut in 1650 and bricked up around 1669 so that nobody could marry through it again; the town archives never recorded whether the parish did that itself or was told to

Count your way across the altarpiece: eighteen saints, two allegories, the dove of the Holy Spirit, God the Father and the pelican, set round a double-drum tabernacle between twisted columns — it took five cartloads to bring it from Bayonne in 1669

Stand in the nave and work out the old seating: until the 1970s the three tiers of galleries were for men only and the floor was for the women, each of whom set her chair on her family's jarleku, the grave slab that belonged to her house — the galleries you are looking at were rebuilt identically in 1857 with help from Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie

Step back from the 35 m bell tower and notice that it has no spire, only a low flat tiled roof: lightning set the old one alight on 27 November 1706, the bells were saved by wrapping them in wet ships' sails, and the temporary tiled cap put on afterwards is still there

Hunt along the west and south walls for the leftovers of the 15th-century Gothic church — a pier, stone ribs, blocked windows, and high on the south wall three worked windows with coussièges, stone benches facing each other inside the embrasure — then find the altar frontal embroidered with tiny coloured glass beads, said to be Louis XIV's wedding gift to the church

On 9 June 1660, Louis XIV married the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain in the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, then halfway through an enlargement begun in 1630 for a town of 12,000 made rich by whaling, cod and the West Indies trade. The couple entered by a door opened in 1650, and around 1669 it was walled up so that no other couple could ever pass through it. Inside, the altar stands twelve steps above the nave with the sacristy underneath it, in front of a 17th-century gilded altarpiece, probably the most monumental in the Basque Country, and wooden galleries run round three sides of the nave in the manner of Labourd churches — a feature said to be unique in Europe — giving the whole interior the look of a theatre.

Saint-Jean-de-Luz: The Church Where Louis XIV Married

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

Ride the 1924 train the 4.2 km up from the col de Saint-Ignace — thirty-five minutes at about 8 km/h on a Strub rack holding a gradient of 250 mm per metre — and inside the carriage find the varnished Ardèche chestnut panelling and count the six compartments of ten seats

Walk the last stretch up from the station to the summit itself and from there trace the Basque coast all the way from San Sebastián round to the mouth of the Adour and the Landes, then find the frontier line that crosses the ridge between Labourd and Haute-Navarre

Walk up on one of the waymarked paths from Sare, Ascain or the col de Saint-Ignace, climbing more than 700 m to the ridge, and time yourself against the train's thirty-five minutes — the Défi de la Rhune is run every year by people trying to beat it on foot

On the open slopes find the pottok ponies, then pick out the manech sheep by their black or russet heads and corkscrew horns, and in the wet ground beside the path look for the round-leaved sundew, a carnivorous plant that grows up here

At the top, find the radio and television masts that cover the whole coastal strip from Hendaye to Bayonne, then look for a road coming up and confirm there is none — Sare voted a summit road down by referendum in 1978, which is why the train survived

The rack railway of La Rhune, inaugurated in 1924 and one of the few rack railways still running in France, climbs 4.2 km of metre-gauge track with its original rolling stock, in the tourist season only, from the col de Saint-Ignace at 169 m — between Ascain and Sare, about 10 km east of Saint-Jean-de-Luz — to a station at 905 m just below the summit of La Rhune, which stands at about 900 m on the Franco-Spanish border between Labourd and Haute-Navarre. Many paths also climb the mountain, from Ascain, Sare and the col de Saint-Ignace, and pottok ponies and manech sheep graze its slopes.

La Rhune: The Rack Railway to the Border Summit

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

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

Tour the Idiazabal Cheese Interpretation Centre and taste raw-milk Latxa sheep cheese, D.O. since 1987

Find the reconstructed shepherd's txabola hut inside the museum

Drive the short pastoral route to the Ecomuseum of Pastoreo in Telleriarte

Buy a wheel of naturally smoked Idiazabal directly from a producer along the route

Idiazabal has been a protected designation since 1 October 1987, and the rules are strict: raw, unpasteurised sheep's milk only, and only from the latxa and carranzana breeds. It takes around seven litres of that milk to make a kilo of properly matured cheese. About five hundred farms and more than a hundred dairies work under the appellation, most of them making the cheese from their own flock alone. The smoked version, which is what most people picture, started as a by-product of curing cheese in shepherds' huts with a fire in them. In 1995 it took first prize at Parma as the best European sheep's cheese.

Idiazabal: The Shepherd's Cheese Route

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.