Fairytale forests

This year we went to the Basque country for the first time. We stayed at Campsite Ixtaspe in the Geoparc between Zumaia and Deba.

While we were there we did several hikes. When we want to do something new we tend to ask around for good hikes, which also happened with this one.

I asked about some good hikes at the campsite and they told me about the hike up to the top at Xoxote. Since this isn’t an easy place to find and google couldn’t even turn up coordinates for us, he explained it to us with a piece of paper and google maps. So we got into the car early in the morning to drive up, it took a bit longer to get to the parkinglot than we expected, but we made it.

When we got up there, we found out that none of the signs where translated and since my Basque or Spanish isn’t that great we tried to figure it out as best as we could.

So we headed up and started to follow the blue signs, which fortunately where the right signs.

When we finally made it to the top, after asking some fellow hikers where to go, since it was a bit foggy and the trail wasn’t really clear and we didn’t have a map of the area. I know not the brightest idea!  Well you could seriously not see a thing, but we decided to hang out at the top for a while anyway and it did clear up every now and then and treated us with a beautiful view.

Up at the top there is a little restaurant, which is only open during the weekend, unfortunately we where there during the week. So no restaurant meals for us this time.

Along the trail there are also wild horses and sheep herds.

When we finally decided to head down, we ran into a lot of fog and it was quite challenging to keep to the trail, when we finally got back in between the trees, it felt like we were walking in a Fairy tail and we stopped for a while to shoot some pictures.

It was a gorgeous hike, even though the fog made it a bit more challenging. It is definitly a place I would want to go back to.