Wine & Mountains Tour (Navarra - Aragon - La Rioja - Bilbao)

Ten nights through Navarra, Aragón, La Rioja and the Basque Country, which is the wine-and-mountains route rather than the high Pyrenean one. Caminos arrange it as a fly-drive with the hire car included, or with the ferry and your own car.

The opening is Navarran and partly French: the Baztán and Bidasoa valleys, Hondarribia, San Sebastián and the rack railway up La Rhune. Then north-east Navarra, which is the best of it. The Irati forest is one of the largest beech woods in Europe, the Lumbier and Arbayún gorges have vultures circling in them, and the Roncal valley makes a sheep’s cheese worth going out of your way for, with Ossau-Iraty over the border doing the same thing in French. Roncesvalles sits in the pass where the Camino crosses from France, and Ori is the first two-thousand-metre peak in the range.

Then the landscape flips to semi-desert at Las Bardenas, with the fortified towns of Sos del Rey Católico and Uncastillo, the castle at Loarre and the rock towers of the Mallos de Riglos. Two nights in Rioja follow for Laguardia, Labastida and the Vivanco wine museum, and the trip finishes with two nights in Bilbao and the Basque coast.

Ten nights, circular. The price is per person for two sharing, bed and breakfast, with the car included; flights are extra. Caminos label the middle section Zaragoza although no Zaragoza stop appears in it, so worth a question. It suits anyone who wants cheese, wine, gorges and a desert in the same ten days, and would rather finish in Bilbao than back at the airport.