Ordizia (Villafranca de Ordizia)

Market Morning, 280 Metres Above the Coast

By half past nine the Plaza Mayor smells of wet grass and sheep’s-milk cheese. Stallholders lay out artichokes the size of cricket balls while a woman in rubber boots counts change into a tobacco tin. This is Wednesday in Ordizia, 40 minutes inland from San Sebastián but a full 280 metres higher, and the air is sharp enough to make you reach for a scarf even in May. The market has opened here almost without pause since 1512; the only obvious concession to the twenty-first century is the contactless machine taped to the honey stand, minimum spend €10, small notes preferred.

British visitors usually arrive by hire car on the A-1, park free for an hour beneath the square, and leave with wheels of Idiazabal milder than any Manchego sold back home. Stay longer and you notice the altitude working in the village’s favour: summers stay five degrees cooler than the coast, winters bring proper frost and the occasional sledging afternoon on the slopes above town. Spring and autumn are the sweet spots—clear skies, green wheat on the surrounding ridges, and market queues short enough to let you reach the front before the cheese sells out.

A Town That Forgot to Close on Sundays—Almost

Ordizia is not a postcard hamlet. Its 10,800 inhabitants live in solid stone blocks built for wool merchants, not for photographers. The arcade that wraps the main square keeps showers off your shoulders while you compare prices for purple sprouting broccoli, and the church tower rises in warm sandstone rather than Disney turrets. Peek inside the Palacio Barrena (town hall) if the door stands ajar—its wooden balcony once hosted Habsburg tax collectors—but expect municipal offices rather than costumed guides.

Outside market hours the place feels half-asleep. One bakery opens on Sunday, everything else pulls down shutters. Arrive on a Tuesday afternoon and you will have the streets to yourself, save for teenagers practising kick-flips outside the 24-hour chemist. The upside is finding a table instantly at Zaldua bar, where the txalupa pintxo—mushrooms and prawns gratinéed like a Basque Welsh-rarebit—costs €2.80 and comes hot enough to burn your tongue. The downside is that you have precisely one shot at lunch; miss it and the nearest sandwich is a 15-minute drive to the motorway services.

Walking Tracks That Start Where the Pavement Ends

Head east from the church and the tarmac gives way to farm lanes within five minutes. A 45-minute loop mapped by the tourist office (free leaflet, English available) circles the Errota-zuri irrigation channel, flat and buggy-friendly. Serious walkers keep going into the Goierri hills: the GR-283 long-distance path climbs 600 metres to the shrine of San Blas, then drops into the next valley where Altobiscar farmhouse serves cider straight from the barrel. Allow three hours return and carry water—there are no pubs, no loos, and phone signal vanishes after the first ridge.

Mountain bikers use Ordizia as a refuel stop but should expect gradients that laugh at Surrey hills. A popular 28-km circuit south to Zegama gains 850 metres on forest tracks; cloud can roll in faster than you can change layers, so pack a proper waterproof even in July. Winter riders sometimes find the route white with snow while San Sebastián basks in 15 °C—proof that altitude matters.

How to Do the Market Without Looking Like a Day-Tripper

Turn up with your own carrier bag. Reusable totes are the local uniform; clutching a plastic Iberia souvenir marks you as an outsider. Stallholders speak enough English to slice 250 g of cheese when asked, but they will not haggle—prices are chalked on blackboards and fair enough that locals pay the same. Bring €20 notes or smaller; the honey seller accepts cards, the pepper grower does not, and the ATM on the square sometimes runs dry by eleven.

Taste first, buy second. Idiazabal varies from young, buttery and mild to two-year-old wheels that taste like a peat fire. Artichoke season runs March-May; in October the same stalls sell saffron milk-cap mushrooms that stain your fingers orange. If it is raining—and it does, 150 days a year—squeeze under the arcades; the produce simply shifts indoors and the smell of wet wool intensifies.

When the Valley Closes In

Even with the market, Ordizia can feel small after the second circuit. Treat it as a working base rather than a destination in itself. Trains to San Sebastián run half-hourly until 22:30, last return 23:15, so you can breakfast on squid-ink talo (corn-flatbread sandwich) in the square, catch the 11:03, spend the afternoon on La Concha beach and still be back for evening cider. Drivers can reach the Rioja Alavesa wine route in 45 minutes, or the hilltop shrine of Arantzazu in twenty, where the car park sits 800 metres higher and April hail is not unknown.

Cloudy days shrink the valley walls to grey walls of mist; on clear ones you can pick out the Pyrenees from the slopes above the ermita. Either way, Ordizia rewards visitors who arrive with realistic expectations: a proper market, a decent lunch, and a lungful of mountain air before the coast reclaims you.