Gernika, Mundaka, Gaztelugatxe and Guggenheim: Private Coast Route from San Sebastián

The route follows a stretch of the Basque coastal road and ends at the titanium museum that put Bilbao on the map. It begins in Gernika, bombed in 1937 and the subject of Picasso's mural-sized Guernica, where the stop includes the oak tree under which, in Rousseau's account, local peasants met to settle the town's affairs.

The coast comes next. Urdaibai is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and a large estuary where mountains, rivers, sea and sand meet, and the view changes with the tide and the time of day. Mundaka is a fishing village with one of the best left-hand waves in the world, and the guide challenges visitors to a game of Basque pelota at its fronton, played bare-handed. Then San Juan de Gaztelugatxe: an islet joined to land by 241 steps, topped by a hermitage, and used in Game of Thrones as Dragonstone. The castle was CGI. The cliffs and surf are not.

At the Guggenheim the group looks at the building and its main works of contemporary art. Locals joke that the museum is the doghouse of Puppy, the statue at its entrance.