Mountain Man: A Vertigo Sufferer in the Basque Country

The Basque Country is effectively the foothills of the Pyrenees. It’s extremely hilly – densely so – and indeed quite mountainous in parts.

Unfortunately I suffer badly from vertigo and/or have a ridiculous phobia about heights  (depending on which way you look at it) which often manifests itself on exposed hillsides, even not particularly steep ones. It’s a form of agoraphobia, if you like, which affects all my balance mechanisms when a certain combination of open space and height kicks in. It doesn´t particularly bother me when I’m surrounded by trees or buildings, but as soon as they disappear I go a bit funny.

So my appreciation of the Basque hills has been somewhat limited this year.  I’ve enjoyed looking at them from a distance, and taking trains through them: I like a nice hill as much as the next man. And many of the Basque hills are very satisfyingly green, forested and alpine. But I haven’t ventured up many of them. Which is a shame, as by all accounts they are extremely good to venture up, and provide some excellent views.

Bilbao itself is entirely surrounded by substantial hills, the reason it is sometimes called ‘El Botxo’ (‘The Hole’). Directly above the Casco Viejo is Mount Artxanda, served by a funicular, whilst on the other side of the river is Mount Pagasarri, which many Bilbainos walk up at weekends. Wherever you are in Bilbao, you can see the green (or white in winter) of the surrounding hills.

From the Casco Viejo, there are a number of quite dramatic staircases and lifts which one can take up the lower slopes of Artxanda to the Begoña district, from where one can get some intermediate views of the centre of Bilbao. These are the Mallona steps….

…. which lead to Etxebarri Park, from which one can see the river and the Guggenheim threading through the centre of town:

Round the corner, are the Solokoetxe steps…

… which afford great views of the Casco Viejo, with the cathedral spire rising above it:

To get to the top of Artxanda, there is a funicular from the centre of town. I have reluctantly done this two or three times in order to see the great views from up there:

There’s also a good monument to the victims of the Spanish Civil War:

Venturing out of Bilbao, there are many terrifying cliffs by the coast, which I have mentioned in previous posts. I was persuaded one day to walk to the top of the highest cliff on the Bizkaia coast (up the hill behind the cliff, I hasten to add, rather than up the cliff itself). There was a spectacular view, which I admired well away from the edge:

Inland, there are the mountains of the beautiful Basque Highlands, to which we’ve made a couple of trips. Once, we even got to the top of the relatively easy Mount Saibigain, in the Gorbeia Natural Park, (or at least Pietro did: I chickened out of the last little bit) which gave us a nice view of some snow-covered peaks:

We also got views of the nearby Mount Amboto, famed in Basque mythology as the home of the goddess Mari:

There are many more great excursions to be made into the highlands. I’m sad, for instance, that we didn´t have time for a trip to the Gipuzkoa side of the mountains, to see the towns of Tolosa (where the beans come from) and Idiazabal (where the cheese comes from), and so on.

Even though I would have probably have been petrified.