La Rhune: The Rack Railway to the Border Summit

Required Activities

• 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