Walk the Virgen del Campo site and count tracks — around five hundred of them in one slab

Work out which prints are carnivores and which are two-legged herbivores, and how you can tell

Work out how they survived: a waterlogged early Cretaceous plain, buried, hardened, then uncovered again by erosion

Go to the palaeontological centre in the village to find out which species left them

Follow the marked route to the other sites around Enciso — there are over three thousand prints in this one municipality

In the early Cretaceous this part of La Rioja was a waterlogged plain, and animals walking across the mud left prints that were buried, hardened and then exposed again as erosion stripped the layers above. There are over three thousand dinosaur footprints in the municipality of Enciso alone. The Virgen del Campo site, on the right bank of the river a few metres from the bridge, has around five hundred tracks of both carnivores and herbivores walking on two legs, and is one of the most complete anywhere.

Enciso: Three Thousand Dinosaur Footprints

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

Eat the vegetables — artichokes, borage, cardoon, asparagus, piquillo peppers — which is what the town is for

Come in April for the vegetable fair, which is a serious event here rather than a novelty

Find out who Quintilian and Prudentius were, and that both came from this town

Find out what the Fames Calagurritana was and find the Matrona on the town's arms

Go into the cathedral, which stands outside the old walls rather than inside them

Built on the Vasconic settlement of Kalakorikos, this was Roman Calagurris Nassica Iulia. It became famous for Pompey's siege, in which almost the whole population is recorded as having starved rather than surrender — the Fames Calagurritana, still symbolised on the town's arms by the Matrona. It produced Quintilian, the great teacher of rhetoric, and Prudentius, among the finest Christian poets of antiquity, whose Peristephanon includes hymns to Calahorra's own patrons Emeterius and Celedonius. It is now the vegetable capital of the Ebro, with a cathedral and a vegetable fair in April that the town takes very seriously indeed.

Calahorra: A Roman Town That Ate Itself

Take the waters at the Baños de Fitero, in use since the Roman settlement of Tudején

Go into Santa María la Real, founded in 1140 on a donation from Alfonso VII by monks from Escaladieu

Find out what Raymond of Fitero raised at Calatrava, and that he never got this monastery back

Work out what the name means and which two kingdoms and two dioceses met here

Find the older bath structure underneath the 19th-century spa buildings

The name Fitero means frontier, because in the 12th century the monastery here sat on the line between Castile and Navarre and between the dioceses of Calahorra and Tarazona. Saint Raymond of Fitero founded the monastery with Cistercians from the abbey of Escaladieu in the high Pyrenees, on a donation from Alfonso VII in 1140. He then raised a Cistercian militia, took it to Calatrava, and out of it came the Military Order of Calatrava. He never got his own monastery back: his monks were beaten and driven to Calahorra, a second Cistercian community arrived in 1161 under a new abbot, and Raymond died in exile at Ciruelos. Downstream on the Alhama are the baths, in use since Roman Tudején, now a working spa on hot mineral water with a Moorish bath structure underneath the 19th-century buildings.

Fitero: Monastery, Frontier, Baths

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

Walk the hilltop and work out how small the town actually was relative to the siege works around it

Find the line of the nine-kilometre Roman circumvallation and the camps along it

Work out Scipio's method: no assault at all, just a ring and thirteen months

Find out what resistencia numantina means in Spanish today and where the phrase came from

Go into the Museo Numantino in Soria for the finds, then come back out to the empty hill

Numancia was a Celtiberian town on the Cerro de la Muela seven kilometres north of Soria, and the Roman Senate eventually handed Scipio Aemilianus the job of finishing it. He did not assault it. He built a nine-kilometre ring of siege works round it — towers, ditches, palisades — and waited. After thirteen months of starvation and disease the Numantines ended it in the summer of 133 BC: some surrendered into slavery, most killed themselves. Spanish still uses the phrase resistencia numantina for a refusal to give in under any circumstances.

Numancia: Thirteen Months and Then Nothing

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

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

Go up to Suso, dug into the hillside, and find where the Glosas Emilianenses were written in the margin of a Latin text

Work out what the glosses actually are: the earliest written Iberian Romance and the earliest written Basque, on the same page

Find the tomb of the hermit Aemilianus, who died in 574 and around whom the whole thing grew

Go down to Yuso and find out who Gonzalo de Berceo was and why he matters to Spanish literature

Work out why here — a remote valley in La Rioja, and the Spanish language starts in the margin of a book

A monk at Suso, writing notes in the margin of a Latin manuscript, put down the Glosas Emilianenses — the first written texts in Iberian Romance and in Basque. Suso began at the end of the 6th century as a Visigothic community around the tomb of the hermit Aemilianus, who died in 574, and Gonzalo de Berceo, the first Castilian poet known by name, worked here in the 13th century. Suso is the upper monastery, Yuso the large one built below it later. Both were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 7 December 1997.