Sukarrieta (Pedernales)

The same stretch of water can look like polished pewter or baked mud within six hours. Stand on the low harbour wall at Sukarrieta at dawn and the estuary is a mirror; return after lunch and it has drained away, revealing a lattice of channels that stink faintly of iodine and teem with small wading birds. No one here needs a watch – the moon writes the daily schedule.

This is not the postcard Basque Country of golden beaches and Michelin stars. Sukarrieta is the satellite village that guidebooks usually file under “see also Mundaka”, a single-lane settlement pressed between the Urdaibai tidal flats and a steep ridge of eucalyptus. It has one cash machine (permanently out of order), one bar (closed on random Tuesdays) and a fronton court whose echoing thwack is the loudest sound after midnight. What it does have is an unobstructed view of how the Cantabrian coast still earns its living.

The Harbour That Empties Twice a Day

Fishing boats rest on their keels every twelve hours. When the water retreats they tilt, absurdly upright, waiting for the Atlantic to float them again. The skippers use the downtime to hose decks and mend nets, chatting in Euskera that switches to slow Spanish the moment they notice a foreign face. There is no ticket booth, no interpretive centre – just a waist-high rail and the smell of diesel mixed with seaweed. Early risers can buy fresh hake straight from the hold: €8 a kilo, gutting included, if you happen to carry coins. Card payments are met with a polite shrug.

Behind the quay the houses are painted the maritime colours Britain forgot: ox-blood red, mustard yellow, a green that photographs turquoise only in brochures. Most are second homes for Bilbao families who drive out at weekends, so weekdays feel suspended. Schoolchildren from the inland hamlet ride in on one yellow bus at nine; by four the only traffic is the bread van that toots its horn like a 1950s comedy.

Mud, Mirrors and Migrants

Birdwatchers discovered Sukarrieta before tourists did. Bring binoculars in late April and you can watch whimbrel stepping daintily across the slime, their down-curved bills probing for crabs. The local bird group keeps a chalkboard by the slipway – yesterday someone logged 47 spoonbills. Membership costs €15 a year and includes use of a wooden hide on the island you can reach when the tide allows.

That island, Txatxarramendi, is less romantic than it sounds: low scrub, a half-collapsed stone hut, views back towards the cranes of Bilbao port. The crossing is a forty-minute shuffle along a causeway of packed sand and broken oyster shells. Miss the tidal window and you will be stranded until evening, entertaining yourself by reading plastic bottles that have drifted from Portuguese trawlers. Go at high spring tide and the water laps the path entirely – locals then kayak across, but rental shops are in Mundaka, not here.

Eating (and Drinking) What the Estuary Offers

There is no restaurant in the village itself. The bar fries whatever the patron’s brother caught that morning: perhaps txangurro (spider crab) croquetas, perhaps chipirones so fresh they still squeak. Order a glass of txakoli, the sharp local white poured from height to knock the bubbles about, and you will be asked whether you want the “Bermeo or the village” version. Both come from vines ten kilometres away; the difference is €1.20 and a slight rise in alcohol. Puddings run to talo con chocolate – a thick corn pancake folded around cooking chocolate, tasting like something a conscientious mother would approve for a ski trip. If the bar is shuttered, the nearest alternative is a roadside grill in Pedernales, ten minutes on foot, where grilled monkfish arrives plain, unsalted, perfect for anyone still traumatised by 1990s Spanish beach resorts.

Walking Routes That Pretend to Be Flat

The tourist office in Gernika will hand you a leaflet titled “Gentle Estuary Paths”. It lies. Set out north-east from the harbour and within five minutes you are climbing a 12% gradient under eucalyptus shade, calves burning, while the map insists this is a “paseo fácil”. The reward is a ridge track that looks across the delta to the painted frontages of Mundaka, then drops you through bracken to Laida beach – three kilometres of yellow sand that is half empty even in August. Turn south instead and you reach the marshes, where raised boardwalks sink alarmingly when overweight. Either way carry water: the only fountain is outside the cemetery, and locals claim it is fed by a funeral spring (they are joking, probably).

Winter walks reverse the appeal. January brings horizontal rain that stings like pinpricks, but the upside is solitude. The bar stays open at weekends to serve chorizo stew and the television shows rugby instead of football. Accommodation prices halve; owners of the three harbour flats throw in firewood and apologise for the lack of central heating. You will need a car – buses shrink to four a day and the Sunday service is mythical.

Getting Stuck, Getting Out

Sukarrieta is 25 minutes by car from Bilbao airport, but public transport turns the hop into a saga. Land after 18:00 and you have missed the last Bermeo connection; a taxi costs €45 and the drivers refuse card payments with evangelical zeal. Hire cars should be booked in advance because the on-airport fleet vanishes at Easter. Once here, parking is free but tactical: the harbour apron fills with vans before 08:00, and the narrow lanes are single-track with stone drainage channels that will rip the underside of a Fiat 500. Leave the car by the football pitch and walk – everything is within five minutes anyway.

Leaving presents the same problem in reverse. There is no taxi rank; you must phone Bermeo radio-taxi the night before and hope someone feels like driving out. Miss your slot and the next bus is an hour away, or two on Saturdays. British visitors who treat timetables as approximate discover that “approximately” can mean sleeping in the shelter.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

May and late-September deliver the kindest light and the fewest people. In May the salt-marsh flowers glow yellow; in September the water is still warm enough for a quick plunge after hiking. July and August turn the village into an overflow car park for Mundaka surf contests – expect slammed doors at 06:00 and teenage argy-bargy over the single shower on the quay. December is atmospheric if you like gales; the estuary foams like Guinness and fishermen stay indoors playing cards, but rental flats feel cavernous once the sun drops at five.

Book ahead for spring weekends: half of Bilbao arrives with mountain bikes on roof racks. Midweek you can turn up unannounced and the apartment owner will probably hand over keys in the bar, together with a lecture about sorting recycling and not flushing paper. She means it – the sewage pump clogs annually after bank holidays.

Sukarrieta will never make anyone’s “top ten” list unless that list is written by a wading bird. It offers instead a chance to calibrate your day by forces older than smartphones, to eat what was swimming the previous night, and to realise how small a place needs to be before it notices you are there. Arrive with that expectation and the receding tide leaves a shiny souvenir: the memory of an hour when nothing happened, very memorably.