Day Trips from Bilbao

The Belle-Époque bay and old-town pintxo crawl justify the 100 km hop. You drift between baroque church squares while garlic-prawn steam drifts from doorways, then climb Monte Urgull for cannon-grade views over La Concha's turquoise crescent.

Mundaka's left-hand wave, Santimamiñe's cave paintings and Guernica's legendary oak fit into one coastal-inland loop. Oyster racks glint in the estuary, herons flap overhead and the air carries equal parts salt and wet grass.

Chalky hills and tempranillo vines roll south of Bilbao. Inside Laguardia's medieval cellars you nose vanilla-oak barrels, while in Elciego you sip wine inside titanium waves dreamt up by Frank Gehry.

Cantabria's capital lines up a grand bay and Belle-Époque cafés laced with burnt-sugar air, but the twist is the open-air wildlife park 15 km inland where brown bears splash in reclaimed iron-mining gullies.

The Basque capital tucks itself inside a star-shaped medieval grid. Yet locals rave louder about the 180-degree Green Ring: wetlands where frogs croak and July air stays cool.

Cross the cantilevered bridge to the hermitage that doubled as Dragonstone. Waves boom through the arch, gulls wheel overhead and txakoli (lightly fizzy white) waits in Bakio's seafront bars.

A fishing port where a Gothic church squats on a Roman lighthouse base. Sea-spray stings your lips on the battlements, then charcoal-grilled bocartes (baby anchovies) crunch at the harbour.