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

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.

San Millán de la Cogolla: Where Spanish Was First Written Down

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

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

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

Climb San Lorenzo at 2,271 metres, the highest point in La Rioja

Ski or walk at Valdezcaray depending on the season

Find the old royal cloth factory buildings and work out why they are in a village this remote

Buy a blanket made in the valley, which is what the wool trade turned into

Walk the beech woods of the Demanda, which are some of the best in the Iberian system

Ezcaray sits in the upper Oja under the Sierra de la Demanda, and it is the one place in La Rioja where the mountains are the point rather than the wine. It had a royal cloth factory in the 18th century, which is why a village this far up a valley has the buildings it has, and the wool trade left a tradition of blanket-making that still runs. Valdezcaray above it is the region's ski area, and in summer the same slopes give the walking, with San Lorenzo at 2,271 metres — the highest point in La Rioja — reachable in a day.

Ezcaray and the Sierra de la Demanda

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 cloister and work out why the mosque underneath had to be demolished rather than adapted — the two buildings faced different ways

Find the Puerta del Juicio on the west front and read the relief of the damned

Find out who Benjamin of Tudela was and how far he travelled in the 12th century

Eat the vegetables — this is the Ribera, and the artichokes, borage and asparagus are the point of the place

Come in spring for the vegetable season, which is short and taken very seriously here

Tudela was a major Muslim town on the Ebro, and its cathedral — late Romanesque on Cistercian lines, begun at the end of the 12th century under Sancho VI and finished under two successors — was built on the site of the Great Mosque of the 9th to 11th centuries. Because the two buildings did not face the same way the mosque had to come down, and only some of its foundations were reused. The Judgement Doorway on the west front carries a crowded relief of the damned. Benjamin of Tudela, the 12th-century Jewish traveller whose account of a journey across the Mediterranean and the Near East is a major medieval source, was born here. The town is also the vegetable capital of the Ebro.