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

Take a boat tour to see the Flysch cliffs

Hike the coastal path from Deba to Zumaia

At the Algorri cliffs, find the thin black clay line cutting through the rock — the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, the asteroid impact layer that ended the age of dinosaurs 66 million years ago

The cliffs between Deba and Zumaia expose about sixty million years of seabed standing on end — layer after layer of rock tilted upright by the collision that raised the Pyrenees, so you walk along the beach and cross the millennia one stratum at a time. That makes this one of the most complete continuous rock records anywhere, and geologists come from all over the world for it. At Algorri there is a thin dark clay line in the rock face: the iridium layer left by the asteroid that ended the Cretaceous 66 million years ago, visible as a band you can put your finger on.

Zumaia: Sixty Million Years of Flysch on End

Get to a village festival where aizkolaris are cutting and time a round yourself

Watch a harrijasotzaile lift and work out that the count, not the single lift, is the contest

Find out what palanka is and that the bar started out as a mining tool

Work out the role of the bet — these are not exhibitions, money is on them and always has been

See a pelota match in a village fronton afterwards, which is the other half of Basque sport

Herri kirolak are farm and quarry jobs turned into contests, and what holds the whole thing together is the bet. Aizkolaris chop through stacked logs against the clock. Harrijasotzaileak lift cylindrical and cubic stones of enormous weight, repeatedly. Teams pull on a rope in sokatira. The iron bar thrown in palanka started life as a mining tool, and in the old days the bets were settled in a meadow outside the village with no standardised weight — only the requirement that everyone in that particular wager used the same one.

Basque Rural Sports: Competitive Work

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

Go into the Santa Casa, the original tower house, still standing inside the Baroque sanctuary built round it

Find the room where Ignatius convalesced and work out what was and was not available to read in it

Work out what happened at Pamplona in 1521 and how a broken leg redirected a religious order

Walk the Baroque basilica outside and compare its scale with the house at its centre

Work out why the Jesuits enclosed the house rather than replacing it

Íñigo López de Loyola was a soldier until a cannonball smashed his leg at Pamplona in 1521. Convalescing in his family's tower house at Azpeitia with nothing to read but a life of Christ and a book of saints, he changed direction entirely and became Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. In the 17th century the family house was enclosed inside a vast Baroque sanctuary, so that the original stone tower still stands intact in the middle of the newer building — the room where he read is still there.

Loyola: Where Ignatius Was Converted

Work out what Head of Biscay meant and what Bermeo lost when it stopped being it in 1602

Go into the Torre Ercilla for the fishermen's museum, which is the town's actual history

Find the Puerta de San Juan, the last surviving gate of the medieval walls

Watch the fleet work the old port, where nearly the whole town still lives

Walk out to the Atalaya and look along the coast towards Matxitxako and Gaztelugatxe

Bermeo was founded in 1236 and held the title of Head of Biscay from 1476 to 1602 — the principal town of the whole lordship, with privileges to match and the leading voice in the Juntas Generales. It lost the title to Bilbao and never got it back. The old port is still one of the most important fishing harbours on the Cantabrian coast, ninety-five per cent of the population lives round it, and Gaztelugatxe is just along the coast. The Torre Ercilla holds the fishermen's museum.

Bermeo: The Head of Biscay

Walk the Gothic cloister and work out how much carving a Cistercian house was supposed to permit

Find out who Reinard de Fonoll was, what an English mason was doing in 14th-century Catalonia, and what was demolished to let him build

Find the royal pantheon built for Peter III the Great, and the tombs of James II and Blanche of Anjou

Find the abbot's rooms James II turned into a royal palace, and the walls Peter IV threw round the lot

Do the Ruta del Císter properly and add Poblet and Vallbona de les Monges

Santes Creus is the second of the three great Cistercian houses of the Catalan Ruta del Císter, with Poblet and Vallbona, and the one with the finest Gothic cloister — built by the English master Reinard de Fonoll with Guillem de Seguer after James II had the Romanesque cloister pulled down to make room for it. Peter III the Great asked to be buried here and the royal pantheon was built for him in the 13th century; his son James II and James's queen Blanche of Anjou lie here too. James also turned the abbot's rooms into a royal palace, and Peter IV walled the whole place. The monastery is unusual in having a village living inside its walls, in the buildings the community left behind.