Beasain

The Friday Clog-Dance and Other Working Rituals

At eleven-thirty on a Friday the square outside Beasain’s church suddenly fills with shoppers who aren’t shopping. They form a loose ring, phones held high, while six locals in white shirts and berets begin a clipped, heel-clicking dance around a txistu player piping a tune that sounds half-military, half-lullaby. The clog-dance lasts six minutes, the market buzz resumes, and by noon you’re clutching a hot txistorra baguette that cost two euros and wondering why no-one back home has heard of this place.

Beasain won’t win Spain’s prettiest-village contest. The first view from the N-I is of tile warehouses, a CAF train factory and a Lidl. Stay on the dual-carriageway and you’ve missed the point. Duck into the old quarter and you find a town of 13,500 that still lives by the rhythms of industry, not tourism: commuter trains, school bells, and a Friday livestock market that has run since 1510. The result is somewhere that feels alive rather than curated, and refreshingly cheap compared with San Sebastián, 45 minutes west.

Steel, Cheese and a River That Won’t Stay Still

The Basque Railway Museum is the obvious indoor stop. Housed in a 1913 engine shed, it holds a 1930s wood-panelled dining car used on the Hendaye-Madrid express and a Mikado steam loco that used to haul iron ore from the nearby mountains. Admission is €8, captions are in Spanish and Euskara, yet the volunteer guides happily fire up an English audio app if you ask. Even rail-sceptics come away understanding why the valley’s steelworks, textile mills and later CAF (builders of the new ScotRail carriages) all clustered here: the river Oria drops fast enough to power turbines but gently enough to float barges.

Outside, the Oria is still the town’s spine. A five-minute riverside path leads from the museum past the former Igartza ironworks, now converted into the four-star Hotel Igartza. Guests sleep inside stone forges; the medieval bridge outside appears on the €1.20 car-park ticket and on most postcards. Double rooms start at £95, breakfast included, and the cloister is floodlit at night – handy if you arrive after the kitchen has shut.

Cross the bridge and you’re in pastureland. Brown-and-white Idiazabal sheep graze the first terraces; the cheese of the same name is sold in the market at €22 a kilo, vacuum-packed for Ryanair-sized hand luggage. A fifteen-minute stroll uphill ends at the village of Lazkao, where a Benedictine monastery sells the same cheese for two euros more – proof that Beasain still prices for locals.

Green Lanes, Old Rail Tracks and the Wrong Shoes

The tourist office (Plaza de San Salvador, opens 10:00-14:00) will push two short walks: the PR-Gi 20 loop (6 km, 200 m ascent) through beech woods to a derelict shepherd’s hut, and the old railway green-way to Zumarraga (11 km each way, dead-flat). Both are sign-posted, but the valley weather is British in its contrariness: sunshine at ten, horizontal hail by eleven. Pack a waterproof, not shorts, even in May.

Mountain bikers use the same green-way; rental bikes are available at Goierri Bikes opposite the station (€20 four hours, €30 day). The surface is compacted gravel, fine for hybrid tyres, and cafés appear every three kilometres – usually a farmhouse bar dispensing coffee and churros for €2.50. If you’d rather walk, the shepherd’s-hut route gives views back over the town’s corrugated roofs and the CAF sheds that look like oversized blue Tupperware. Allow two hours, plus twenty minutes to photograph the sheep who block the path and refuse to budge.

Market-Day Calories and Monday-Closed Realities

Basque cuisine is normally code for Michelin stars, but Beasain runs on simpler fuel. Friday is the edible highlight: stallholders slice hot txistorra – a thin, paprika-laced sausage milder than chorizo – and slip it into crusty baguette with roasted green pepper. One feeds two children or one hungry teenager, costs €2, and explains why the queue is twenty-deep at 11:00.

For sit-down food, Blai Taberna on Kale Nagusia charges €1.80 per pintxo. The gilda – anchovy, olive and guindilla skewer – is the classic order; ask for it “sin guindilla” if you want to dodge the chilli kick. Locals drink zurito (a third of a pint of lager) at €1.20; British visitors usually upgrade to caña size and still pay only €1.80. House wine is served in chunky tumblers and costs €1.50; quality is perfectly acceptable unless you’re a stickler for tasting notes.

Come Monday the market is gone, half the bars shut, and the town remembers it’s a dormitory. Plan accordingly: visit between Wednesday and Sunday, or book a rural cottage up-valley and use Beasain as your re-stock point.

Getting Here, Getting Out

Beasain sits on the Euskotren E2 line, half-hourly between San Sebastián and Zumarraga. The journey from Donostia takes 50 minutes and costs €3.60 each way – cheaper than the city’s own bus fare. Trains have space for four bikes and ticket machines that accept contactless cards. By car it’s 55 km from Bilbao airport (mostly motorway), but morning traffic round Arrasate can add 25 minutes. Friday market-day parking is free on the river streets; the underground car park under Plaza de San Salvador costs €1.20 for the entire day and rarely fills.

If you’re without wheels, the town makes an easy base: 35 minutes by train to San Sebastián for the beach, 30 minutes to Vitoria for the medieval quarter, 25 minutes to the spa village of Ordizia. Return the same evening and your accommodation bill is half the coastal price. Just remember the last train leaves Donostia at 22:18; miss it and a taxi is €90.

Why You Might Leave Early – and Why You Might Not

Beasain will never supply the wow-moment of a Hondarribia or a Ronda. The old quarter is pleasant rather than jaw-dropping, and the steelworks hum provides a constant low soundtrack. Yet that very functionality is what keeps prices sane, menus in Basque rather than Google-Translate Spanish, and the clog-dance free of selfie-stick crowds. Stay for the Friday market, walk the railway line until the sheep outnumber people, and you’ll have seen a slice of Basque life that the coastal coach parties glide straight past. One night is plenty; two lets you slow to valley time. Pack waterproof shoes, an appetite for sausage, and curiosity about how places work when they’re not trying to impress you. Beasain will handle the rest.