Segura

The washerwoman hangs sheets from a medieval balcony while a delivery van squeezes through an archway built for horses. This is Segura in a single frame: a living village that happens to have five-hundred-year-old walls, not a heritage set dressing waiting for tourists to arrive.

At 1,500 residents, Segura dominates the upper Oria valley without ever feeling busy. The stone houses cluster on a defensible ridge because this was once the customs point between coastal Guipúzcoa and the Castilian interior. Traders paid tolls here; today the traffic is mostly locals fetching bread and weekend visitors from San Sebastián, 45 minutes away on the AP-1.

A map-free wander

The medieval grid is so compact you can cross it in four minutes, yet the gradients demand proper shoes. Start where the modern road spits you out at the lower gate and simply climb. Calle Mayor, barely two metres wide, functions as both high street and drainage channel; after rain the water races downhill, polishing the cobbles to a skating-rink sheen. Look up and you’ll spot the Guevara-Lazarraga coat of arms carved above a doorway, or a 1618 datestone half-erased by later owners who needed a wider window for the telly.

Halfway up, the church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción appears without warning, its bulk shoved sideways into the slope. Walk the full perimeter: the apse sits three metres lower than the nave door, a neat bit of medieval site-levelling. Inside, the retablo is pure nineteenth-century gilt overload, but the south door still has its original ironwork. Whether it’s open depends on whether the sacristan is around; if not, console yourself with the view back down the lane where laundry flaps against heraldic stone like bunting at a fête.

The square that still works

Plaza de los Fueros was built for markets, not selfies. The arcades are deep enough to keep rain off the veg, and Thursday morning still sees stallholders from Ordizia setting out crates of leeks and Idiazabal cheese. Prices are written on scraps of cardboard; no one haggles because everyone knows the going rate. Order a cortado under the arches and you’ll pay €1.30 if the bar owner recognises a neighbour, €1.50 if you sound foreign. Either way, the milk arrives at exactly sixty degrees—Basque foam art without the theatre.

Behind the square the land drops away sharply. Follow the alley that smells of woodsmoke and you reach a stone balcony built for loading pack-mules. From here the Oria valley unrolls like a green tablecloth stitched with farmhouses. In April the slopes are luminous; by late July the grass has burnt to hay and the air smells of warm thyme. Either season, the same wind that once carried salt from the Bay of Biscay now brings the distant hum of the A-1.

Leg-stretch territory

Segura isn’t a hiking base, but three signed paths start from the upper gate. The shortest loops past the cemetery to a viewpoint where you can sit on a bench donated “In memory of Dad, who loved this hill”. Allow twenty minutes. The longest climbs 250 m through beech to the ruins of a watchtower; you’ll need boots after rain and about an hour each way. None of the paths are crowded: mid-week you’re more likely to meet a farmer on a quad than another tourist.

If the clouds roll in—the village sits at 365 m, so weather arrives fast—the stone channels turn into waterfalls and the temperature drops five degrees in ten minutes. Cobblestones become lethal. Locals swear by rubber-soled espadrilles; trainers with decent grip work just as well. Umbrellas are useless because the alleys funnel wind like a blowpipe.

Combining, not lingering

Segura makes sense as one stop on a loop, not a destination in itself. From here it’s ten minutes by car to Idiazabal, where the cheese cooperative gives weekday tours (€3, includes tasting). Continue another quarter-hour to Zumárraga and you can ride the 1912 railway up to the sanctuary of Arantzazu, a cliff-edge concrete chapel that still looks futuristic sixty years after it was built. Back at valley level, Ordizia holds its produce market every Wednesday; stallholders start packing up at one o’clock sharp.

Public transport exists but favours school hours. One morning bus leaves Beasain at 09:15, arrives Segura 09:35, and returns at 13:45. Miss it and you have a four-hour wait or a €20 taxi ride. Driving remains the practical option; parking outside the walls is free and plentiful, inside impossible.

What lunch costs

Menu del día in the square runs €14–16 for three courses and wine. Expect leek soup, grilled trout, and a slab of custard flan heavy enough to stun a burglar. The single hotel, six rooms above the chemist, charges €65 B&B; book ahead at weekends when Basque families descend for communions. Otherwise, day-trippers time the visit so they’re back in San Sebastián for pintxos—thirty minutes on the motorway, less if the new Tolosa bypass is quiet.

Evening brings a different village. By six the souvenirless shops roll down their shutters and the bars fill with men debating rugby in dialect so thick even Spaniards struggle. Visitors aren’t unwelcome, but the ambience is neighbourhood pub, not tour-group friendly. Stay if you want to hear txalaparta played on tomato crates; leave if you need sleep before an early start.

The honest verdict

Segura delivers exactly what it promises: an intact medieval core where people still live medieval-size lives. It will not keep you busy for eight hours, and on grey February afternoons it can feel austere. Come expecting to spend a slow ninety minutes looking at stone, wood and sky, then head on fed rather than overwhelmed. Do that, and the washerwoman’s sheets fluttering against sandstone might just be the most memorable image of your Basque week.