Araotz YECTOYD and a Santander Seaside Send-off at La Arnia
Araotz is one of the most significant climbing areas in the Basque Country, with over 400 routes either side of a steep sided valley, near the town of Oñati (best […]
Araotz is one of the most significant climbing areas in the Basque Country, with over 400 routes either side of a steep sided valley, near the town of Oñati (best […]
Dos Hermanas, or The Two Sisters, are a pair of impressive limestone towers guarding a pass near the town of Irurtzun. Somewhat incongruously they’ve now squeezed the A15 autopista between […]
Wending our way westwards towards Santander and our ferry home, we crossed into Navarra – you know you’ve arrived in the Basque speaking part of Spain because all the place […]
Santa Barbara is a small crag a few miles south of San Sebastian – not a destination venue, but a super-convenient spot nonetheless. Think Witches Quarry or Hartington if you […]
Here’s another destination crag that you’ve probably never heard of. Just south of Bilbao, in the Basque Country / Pais Vasco is the Urkiola Natural Park, made up of the […]
Etxauri IS the premier crag in Navarra, and we’d saved it for a fitting finale as our last day’s cragging on this trip. Imagine our disappointment as we woke to […]
There’s a lot of rock in Navarra, just like the rest of Spain, and a fair bit of climbing concentrated around Pamplona. We’ve been keeping an eye on the weather […]
Okay – sounds more dramatic than it was. Our ferry was delayed by the discovery of a bomb in Portsmouth Harbour, but we were 24hrs and a thousand miles away […]
With a few hours drive ahead of us, and a fair collection of aches and pains, we decided on a brief excursion into tourist territory, rather than snatching a token […]
After our whistle stop tour of the best couple of crags in La Rioja we passed through Navarra and the city of Pamplona on our way to our rendezvous with […]
The other crag recommended in La Rioja is Anguilano. Like Clavio, this dominates the eponymous village, but rather than a conglomerate muffin it offers a huge swathe of clean-cut slab […]
Heading east, we drop over the tail end of the Cantabrian range and stop briefly in the southern Basque country, or Pais Vasques. Everything changes, from landscape to architecture, and […]
The heart of Basque country is Gernika (or Guernica). The spiritual home, where meetings of the Nation’s leadership were traditionally held beneath an ancient tree, was made famous as the […]
Heading for Santander and we travel through Basque Country. It really feels like a different country – different architecture, different landscape and different language – almost slavic in look and […]
Heading north now, towards Bilbao and a ferry crossings on Thursday. Santa Linya provides an ideal stopping off point – easy overnight parking, some great routes we didn’t have time […]