Alkiza (Alquiza)

The church bell strikes eleven and nobody notices. Not the elderly man clipping his hedge with kitchen scissors, nor the Labrador sprawled across the single lane that doubles as Alkiza's high street. Even the tractor driver, descending from the slopes with a trailer of hay, merely lifts one finger from the steering wheel in greeting. Time here isn't measured in minutes but in seasons, and today's measurement is 'late summer, slightly too warm for boots'.

This scatter of stone farmhouses, 25 kilometres south-west of San Sebastián, occupies a ridge at 450 metres above sea level. The Bay of Biscay glints on the horizon when the Atlantic mist lifts, though the sea feels theoretical. What dominates instead is a patchwork of pasture and beech wood, stitched together by dry-stone walls that have outlasted every modern map. Each farmhouse – baserrí in Basque – sits in its own micro-plot, so the village population of 320 humans is comfortably outnumbered by buildings.

How to Arrive Without Scraping the Hire Car

Fly into Bilbao (EasyJet from London, Manchester and Bristol) or Biarritz if you're combining with French Basque country. From either airport, the drive takes just under an hour on the A-1, then the last six kilometres become a switch-back climb through oak forest. The road is tarmacked but barely two cars wide; passing places are marked by white stones rather than signs. Night-time arrivals will share the tarmac with free-roaming cows returned from evening pasture – drive slowly unless you fancy explaining Basque bovine collision protocol to Hertz.

There's no bus service on Sundays and only three departures daily from Tolosa on weekdays. A taxi from San Sebastián costs €70 each way, so unless you're planning a pilgrimage to the 11th-century silver mines of Aizpea (spoiler: they're mostly rubble), bring wheels.

What Passes for Sights

San Martín church, locked except for Sunday mass at 10 a.m., is smaller than most Somerset village chapels. Its bell tower houses two bells: la gorda, cast in 1789, still rings the angelus at noon. The only other audible technology is the village Wi-Fi router, installed in 2018 and already overloaded. Stand in the porch and rotate slowly: every view is a lesson in sustainable living – solar panels tucked behind slate roofs, woodpiles stacked with military precision, apple trees pollarded to umbrella shape so sheep can graze underneath.

Beyond the church, the settlement dissolves into lanes that peter out at farm gates. Follow the yellow arrow painted on the water trough and you'll join the GR-121 long-distance path, which threads north to the limestone heights of Aralar Natural Park. Within thirty minutes the tarmac gives way to red earth studded with quartz. Another fifteen and you're alone except for carrion crows arguing over windfall walnuts. The standard loop to Ermita de Zumarraga and back takes two hours, gains 250 metres of elevation, and delivers a picnic-table view across three provinces – Gipuzkoa, Navarre and Álava – though the signposting is so discreet you might celebrate with the wrong valley.

Food That Doesn't Come with a Photogenic Slate Plate

The village's single bar, Aterpe, opens at 7 a.m. for farmers and closes when the last customer leaves, usually around midnight. Monday and Tuesday in winter it's shut entirely – plan accordingly. Coffee is €1.20, served in glass tumblers, and the menu chalked on the wall rarely exceeds six items. Order alubias de Tolosa – midnight-purple beans simmered with pork rib and morcilla – and you'll receive a clay dish big enough for two, plus a bottle of house cider poured from shoulder height to aerate the liquid. The theatrical pour is obligatory, not tourist theatre; locals perform it while checking football scores on their phones.

If you crave choice, drive ten minutes down to Tolosa before 2 p.m. and queue at Bar Iberico for chuleta – a T-bone the thickness of a paperback, cooked over holm-oak coals until the exterior tastes of smoke and the interior of blue cheese. Vegetarians should request pimientos del piquillo rellenos de setas; the mushrooms come from the beech slopes you've just walked, so expect the flavour of earth after rain.

Where to Sleep (and Why You Might End Up in the Wrong Village)

Alkiza itself offers three legal guest places, two inside working farmhouses where dogs patrol the yard and breakfast includes eggs you saw collected. The third is a self-catering cottage whose booking calendar fills for the September 8 fiesta by Easter weekend. Online maps occasionally pin accommodation in Asteasu or Anoeta, villages 200 metres below in altitude but twenty minutes by car because of the mountain switch-backs. Double-check coordinates before paying; that bargain casa rural might involve a night-time goat-track commute.

Mobile signal is patchy inside stone walls; most proprietors leave a handwritten note with the Wi-Fi password and instructions to "salta a la calle si necesitas llamar" – step into the lane if you need to phone. It works, provided you're on Vodafone Spain; other providers treat the ridge as an international border.

When the Weather Decides Your Itinerary

Atlantic fronts arrive without warning. A morning that begins in bright sunshine can dissolve into hill fog by lunchtime, reducing visibility to the length of a beret. Locals judge the forecast by the height of cows in the pasture: if the herd clusters on the ridge, rain is two hours away. Waterproof trousers aren't overkill in July; they're survival wear. Conversely, when the levanter wind blows from the Mediterranean, temperatures jump 15 degrees and paths become dust bowls – carry two litres of water even on the 5-kilometre loop.

Winter brings snow perhaps twice a year, enough to close the road to Tolosa for half a day. Chains are rarely required but the municipality doesn't grit, preferring to wait for the sun to clear the tarmac. If you're renting in February, book a four-wheel-drive or practise reversing down a 12% gradient while a farmer in a Land Rover breathes on your bumper.

The Honest Verdict

Alkiza rewards hikers, readers and anyone whose ideal afternoon involves watching clouds shadow the slopes while a sheep coughs somewhere below. It bores rigid the Instagram crowd seeking colourful balconies or cocktail bars. Come with boots, a Basque phrasebook and enough cash for cider, and the village will lend you its rhythm: work when it's light, eat when it's dark, sleep when the cows do. Arrive expecting marble churches or boutique olive-oil tastings and you'll exhaust the possibilities before the bar reopens after siesta. The choice, like the single lane through town, is gloriously narrow.