Iruraiz-Gauna

The church tower at Iruraiz appears long before the village itself. It rises from wheat stubble like a medieval exclamation mark, the only vertical thing for miles. This is the Llanada Alavesa at its most insistent: a plateau so flat that a two-storey building becomes a landmark, and the sound of a single tractor carries across three parishes.

Iruraiz Gauna isn't one place but a loose constellation of five farming hamlets—Iruraiz, Gauna, Eribe, Ziriano and Monasterioguren—scattered across 42 square kilometres of cereal fields south-east of Vitoria-Gasteiz. The council lumps them together for statistical convenience; the residents recognise each other by the direction they take when the working day ends. Between settlements the land feels communal. Tracks wide enough for combine harvesters double as footpaths; signposts are optional, GPS advisable.

Stone, Shield and Silo

Start at San Martín in Iruraiz, a sandstone parish church rebuilt piecemeal between the 16th and 18th centuries. Walk the perimeter first: the walls are patched with iron staples, the bell openings are simple Romanesque slots, and the south doorway still carries the deep grooves where sharpening stones wore away the masonry. Inside, the altarpiece is provincial Baroque—gilded but not gaudy—and the air smells of beeswax and burnt dust from the single electric heater. Services are Sundays only; the rest of the week the building stays unlocked because, as the caretaker explains, "everyone knows everyone and no-one steals from God."

Gauna's San Esteban follows the same template three kilometres west, except here the tower is crowned with 19th-century glazed tiles the colour of oxidised copper. Stand between the porch and the granary opposite and you can read the social hierarchy in stone: the church occupies the high ground; the casa torre beside it sports a worn coat of arms; the modern grain silo behind dwarfs both. Agriculture won the architectural contest.

Monasterioguren promises more than it delivers. Documents mention a Cistercian grange belonging to the Abbey of Retuerta, yet above ground nothing remains except a few reused blocks in farmhouse walls and a stone trough locals call "el lavadero de los monjes". The hamlet's real interest lies in its layout: houses face inwards towards a communal threshing floor, a defensive arrangement that predates the monks and recalls the days when bandits rode down from the Sierra de Toloño.

Walking the Checkboard

The pleasure here is in the grid. Field margins run dead straight, meeting at right angles enforced by title deeds drawn up in 1855. In spring the pattern is green and brown: young wheat alternating with ploughed beet. By July the palette narrows to gold and silver as the wheat ripples and the irrigation ditches dry to white clay. Autumn brings stubble fires whose smoke hangs in windless layers, and winter can sheet the whole plateau in hoar frost so thick that fence wires whistle when the wind arrives.

A circular route links Iruraiz–Gauna–Eribe–Ziriano in 11 km. The surface is compacted limestone grit, rideable on a hybrid bike but rattling on road tyres. Leave the tarmac at the picnic table by the Gauna cemetery; from there the track heads due south between paddocks where crested larks rise in pairs. Halfway stands an isolated stone cross, 16th-century according to the heritage register, though lichen has obliterated every carving. Farmers touch the shaft for luck when they pass; tyres have polished the base to the smoothness of cathedral brass.

Take water. Apart from the occasional trough fed by a wind-pump there is nowhere to refill, and the nearest shop is six kilometres away in Agurain. A northerly breeze can drop the perceived temperature five degrees even in May; conversely, an August noon radiates off the limestone like a storage heater. Hat, sunscreen and a wind-shirt weigh nothing and save the day.

What You Won't Find

No gift shops. No boutique hotels occupying restored palaces—there were never palaces to restore. The only bar opens at 7 am for the tractor crews and closes when the owner fancies an afternoon nap; if the roller shutter is down, it stays down. Phone reception flickers between hamlets; download your map offline before leaving Vitoria.

Crowds are equally hypothetical. On an average weekday you will meet more dogs than people, and the dogs belong to the farms. Weekend cyclists from the capital appear in fluorescent packs around eleven, disappear by two, and the plateau reverts to its default soundscape: skylarks, wind, and the soft metallic scrape of a disc harrow.

Salvatierra for Pudding

Ten minutes west by car, the hill-top town of Salvatierra (Agurain in Basque) supplies the services Iruraiz Gauna lacks. Thursday is market day: stalls spill across the arcaded main square selling txistorra sausage, honey from the Urbasa sierra, and vegetable seedlings in reused yoghurt pots. The 13th-century church of San Juan has a Gothic portal worth inspecting for the corbels—one shows a woman hitting her husband with a distaff, another depicts a pilgrim vomiting after too much wine. Above town, the ruined castle walls make a good vantage point; you can look back across the plateau and spot the two church towers you walked between earlier.

If you're without a car, the Lurraldebus line between Vitoria and Salvatierra stops at the Iruraiz turn-off three times daily; from the drop-off it's a 1.5 km trudge along the verge, perfectly safe but joyless in rain. Check the timetable in advance—Sunday services are skeletal and a missed bus means a €35 taxi back to the capital.

When to Go, When to Stay Away

April–mid-June and September–October offer the kindest light and temperatures comfortable for walking. At dawn the plateau can lie under a sea of radiation fog with only the tower tops emerging; photographers call it "the Altiplano effect" even though we're only 550 m above sea level. July and August are feasible if you start early and finish by noon; otherwise the reflected glare is relentless, and shade is as rare as a traffic jam. Winter days can be crystalline, but an easterly levanter drives horizontal rain across fields with no hedgerows to brake it. Mud sticks to the calcareous grit and builds up on boots until you walk on tennis-ball soles.

The Bottom Line

Iruraiz Gauna will not change your life. It offers no epiphany, no Instagram cathedral, no story you'll retell at dinner parties. What it does provide is a calibration device for sense of scale: after a morning here, the South Downs feel crowded and a Cotswold village seems fussy. Walk the grid, note how geography and land registry once dictated everything, and catch the 4 pm bus back to Vitoria before the bar shutter rattles down. You'll have spent a day in a landscape that measures distance by church bells and time by the colour of wheat. Sometimes that is exactly enough.