The Basque Country is discovered by walking. Nicole Bergara, whose family has been making makilas, the famous trekking poles for seven generations, has two favorite walks, both with historical sounds. The first leads to one of the most famous archaeological sites in the region: the Occabé cromlechs, dating back a thousand years before Jesus Christ, an hour and a half drive from Larressore, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques.
There, twenty-six tombs stand, twenty-six protohistoric tombs drawing a circle on a large grassy plateau. During Antiquity, the area was a territory of transhumance. It was excavated in 1914, then again in 1968-1969, revealing an archaeological ensemble comprising ten dolmens, sixty-three tumuli, one hundred and seven cromlechs and 232 hut bottoms. “This sacred necropolis is the high place par excellence of protohistory in the Basque Country”, writes archaeologist Jacques Blot.
A cut-throat in the Middle Ages
To get there, we walk in the Iraty forest, the largest beech forest in Europe, and take a mountain road which alone justifies the trip, offering magnificent views of the Pyrenees. The cromlechs are at an altitude of 1,382 meters, and the summit of Occabé at 1,456 meters. It is the highest point of the Iraty forest. Returning to the plateau requires fording the Burdinkurutxeta stream several times.
The second walk, more urban, is in the Haranbeltz district, in Ostabat: one of the major stages of the road to Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle. Three lanes arrived there, which opened on Navarre. The upper part of the city was reserved for rich merchants who could pay the right to access it, the lower, free, offered to poor pilgrims and the sickest. Two hospitals were set up there.
There are still some very beautiful houses in the village. A hiking trail starts from the church, goes down the main street and then turns left towards the most famous monument of the place: the Saint-Nicolas-d’Haranbeltz chapel, haranbeltz meaning in Basque “black valley”. To reach it, you have to cross a very dense wood below in the valley. In the Middle Ages, it was a cut-throat, where thieves of all kinds awaited pilgrims. It has since calmed down. From the Col d’Ipharlatze, the view extends over the pretty valleys of the Basque Country.