Stand between the puente viejo and Calatrava's footbridge and work out how many centuries are in view

Find out what Alfonso XI granted the town in 1335 and what the bridge had to do with it

Walk the old quarter stacked up the hill above the port

Watch the fleet unload — this is one of the main fishing ports on the Cantabrian coast

Walk round to Arrigorri beach at the mouth of the ría

Alfonso XI granted Ondarroa the rights to the traffic over the wooden bridge across the Artibai in 1335, and the stone bridge that replaced it in the 18th century — the puente viejo — is still standing. Beside it Santiago Calatrava built a white asymmetric footbridge in the 1990s, so a working Basque fishing town has a 14th-century charter, an 18th-century bridge and a piece of late-20th-century engineering all within a hundred metres. The port is among the most important on the Cantabrian coast and the old quarter is packed onto the slope above it.

Ondarroa: A Bridge by Calatrava in a Fishing Town

Check the tide and walk the causeway across to the island of San Nicolás

Go into the basilica of Santa María and look at the altarpiece, among the largest in Spain

Watch the boats come in and work out what a working Basque fishing port still looks like

Find out what the Antzar Eguna in September is and how it is done now

Walk the coast path along the cliffs either side of the town

Lekeitio has two beaches with the island of San Nicolás between them, and at low tide a stone causeway comes out of the water so you can walk across to it. The town is a working fishing port with a late Gothic basilica whose altarpiece is one of the largest in Spain. Its September festival includes the Antzar Eguna, in which crews in boats grab at a goose suspended over the harbour — now done with a dead bird, having been done otherwise for a very long time, which is the sort of thing Basque coastal towns do not apologise for.

Lekeitio: A Fishing Town and an Island

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

Ride or walk a vía verde end to end and notice that the gradient never really changes

Work out why: the route is a railway grade, and a steam locomotive could not pull anything steeper

Go through the tunnels and over the viaducts, which are the original railway structures

Find the old station buildings on the route and see what they have been turned into

Work out which line this was, when it closed, and what it was carrying

Spain closed a great many branch lines and mining railways in the 20th century, and rather than let the trackbeds go the country turned them into the Vías Verdes — surfaced, waymarked routes for walking, cycling and riding, on grades no steeper than a steam locomotive could pull. That constraint is the point: they are almost flat, they go through the tunnels and over the viaducts the engineers built, and they make otherwise serious terrain accessible to anyone. The Ferrocarriles Vascongados route runs 13.6 kilometres between Soraluze-Placencia de las Armas and Anzuola.

Vías Verdes: Riding Spain's Abandoned Railways

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

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

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

Go into the Sancti Spiritus university building, founded by papal bull in 1540 and closed in 1842

Work out what five faculties in a Gipuzkoan town of this size actually meant

Find out what conditions the town attached to joining Gipuzkoa in 1540

Go into the Arrikrutz cave under the town

Drive up the valley to Arantzazu, which is the other half of a day here

In 1540 Bishop Rodrigo Mercado de Zuazola founded the University of Sancti Spiritus at Oñati by bull of Paul III — the first university in the Basque Country, with faculties of law, canons, arts, medicine and theology, running until it closed in 1842. The town negotiated its own annexation to Gipuzkoa in 1540 on conditions including a road and an increased endowment for the university. It was a Carlist stronghold in the 19th century and the Pretender's headquarters. The Arrikrutz cave beneath it is open, and Arantzazu is up the valley.

Oñati: The First University in the Basque Country

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.