Lararaun

The sheep start calling at dawn. Not the gentle bleating you hear in Cotswold postcards, but the sharp latxa breed that keeps Larraun’s 200-odd dairy farms in business. Stand on the track above Iribas and you’ll see them moving between stone walls, their bells clanking like loose change while the first light catches the beech woods above. This is Navarra’s quiet working valley, not a show village, and it behaves accordingly.

A Valley That Refuses to Cluster

Larraun doesn’t do a neat medieval core. The municipality strings out along 45 kilometres of minor road, the houses glued to the slope wherever a spring or flat patch allowed a forebear to build. The parish church of San Miguel is the closest thing to a centre: a solid 18th-century rectangle with a tower you can spot from three ridges away. Park by the fronton court (free, no time limit) and walk the five minutes to it; the rest of the settlement is best seen from the seat of a car or, better, a bike.

Elevation matters here. At 566 metres the nights stay cool even in July, and the hay is still cut by tractor rather than combine. Climb 200 metres to the forest edge and the temperature drops another three degrees; suddenly you’re in Basque mountain country where clouds form faster than you can unpack a waterproof. Bring one, always. The valley’s signature green isn’t courtesy of irrigation but of Atlantic weather that can arrive before you’ve finished your coffee.

Cider, Steak and the Bottom-Up Pour

Food is scattered, not packaged. The one place every English-speaker seems to find is Sidrería Larraun Sagardotegia in Iribas, a stone farmhouse with long tables and a single set menu: salt-cod tortilla, txuleton rib-eye the size of a shoe, sheep’s-cheese and walnuts, all served with unlimited cider poured from shoulder height. The trick is to catch only two fingers’ worth, knock it back while still fizzing, then let the glass stand empty until the next round. Ask for crianza if the sharp stuff makes you wince; it’s barrel-aged and closer to dry Somerset cider. Dinner runs €35 including tip; book at weekends because half of Pamplona drives up.

Beyond that, you graze the comarca. Lekunberri, ten minutes north, has the nearest cash machine, bakery and Thursday market. The cheese you tasted at the cider house probably came from a co-op in Araitz; their tiny shop opens 09:00-13:00, closes for siesta, and may be out of stock if the latxa flock had a bad spring. Plan accordingly.

Tracks for Boots or Tyres, Not Coaches

Walking is self-assembled. The valley sits on the southern lip of the Aralar Natural Park, a ridge-and-pasture landscape that stretches 20 km north into Gipuzkoa. Footpaths exist, but way-marking is sporadic; locals still navigate by borda names – Olagara, Urrutxi, Zinko – rather than coloured stripes. Download the 1:25,000 Navarra map layer to your phone before you leave Wi-Fi, or pick up the paper version at Pamplona’s tourist office for €8. A straightforward two-hour loop starts at the church, follows the GR-12 west through hay meadows, then cuts up into beech woods before dropping back via the track to Etxaleku. Gradient is gentle, but the surface turns to axle-deep mud after October rain; boots with a decent tread save dignity.

Mountain bikers use the same web of farm tracks. The celebrated Plazaola green-way doesn’t actually enter Larraun municipality – it runs along the valley floor 4 km north – but you can join it at Lekunberri and pedal the 22 km west towards Andoain, mostly flat tarmac on the old railway bed. Rental bikes (€18 a day, helmet included) are available at the Plazaola tourist office where the staff speak English and will print the bus timetable for your return. Check times carefully: on weekdays the last service leaves Andoain at 18:10, and missing it means a €70 taxi.

When the Valley Shuts Its Doors

Winter is honest. The first snow can dust the ridge at 1,200 m by late October, and the road over Urbasa to the west is regularly closed after 5 pm once the salt trucks finish. Larraun itself rarely sees snow lying, but the cold is damp; stone houses were built for livestock as much as people, so if you’re renting a cottage check whether heating is oil-fired or the original open hearth. Many weekenders from Bilbao arrive with sacks of churrasco charcoal and a sense of humour.

Summer, by contrast, is almost busy. Pamplona families rent village houses for the school holidays, cars with city plates nose along the single-track lanes, and the stream below Iribas becomes a paddling pool for overheated children. August 15 brings a small Basque sports festival – wood-chopping, stone-lifting, aizkora – in the church square. It starts late, finishes late, and the cider flows faster than safety advisers would like. Visitors are welcome, applauded even, but nobody reorganises the timetable for tourists; when the last harrijasotzaile drops his 100-kg stone, the bar closes.

The Honest Season

Spring and autumn remain the sweet spots. In May the meadows are knee-high with buttercups and the beech buds still let sunlight through, so you can walk all day without suncream. By late September the oak has turned copper, the first latxa milk is going into the vats, and the fiesta of San Miguel (weekend closest to the 29th) offers a low-key mix of mass, grilled sausage and a raffle whose top prize is often a hind quarter of local lamb. Temperatures sit in the teens, perfect for cycling the green-way without arriving drenched.

Accommodation is limited. The valley itself has two legal self-catering houses and one three-room guesthouse; everything else is in Lekunberri where Hotel Plazaola offers half-board, bike storage and owners who understand British expectations of hot water at 07:00. Book early for Easter and the first weekend of October when the setas (wild mushrooms) appear and half of San Sebastián drives over.

Getting Here, Getting Out

No airport pretends to be close. Bilbao is the shortest haul: Ryanair from London Stansted, two-hour drive south on the A-1 and NA-710. Biarritz works if you’ve hired a car on the French side; allow 2 h 15 min via the coastal A-63 then over the low pass at Lizarrusti. Public transport is doable but eccentric: train to Pamplona (change Madrid or Zaragoza from London via Paris), then FEVE narrow-gauge to Lekunberri at 15:37 and a €12 taxi ride into the valley. Miss that connection and you’re spending the night in Pamplona.

Leave time for the exit, too. Larraun is the kind of place you plan as a two-hour leg-stretch and end up staying for lunch, then dinner, then one more walk to catch the evening light on the beech trunks. The valley doesn’t shout, but it has a habit of slowing clocks to sheep-time. Allow for that when you book your return flight – Bilbao check-in is two hours away, and the road has tractors.