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Spain

Walking Holidays | Food & Culture | Family Adventures

Spanish Pyrenees

A journey into the alpine heart of the Spanish Pyrenees reveals a precious landscape of high peaks, glacial lakes and great forests, where the power of nature is untamed by the human hand.

To traverses the entire range is to link those same mountains with the contrasting cultural texture of Navarre, Aragón and Catalonia, along roads less travelled from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, Bilbao to Barcelona.

Whether you want to do it all, or focus on walking in the high valleys, our job is to put it all together and share it in a way that makes it all personal to you. For walkers, adventurous families and the adventurous at heart, we have myriad ways to do so. We've shared a few at the bottom.

If any or all of it captures your imagination and has you yearning for the high mountains, we'd love to take you there.

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Read on to discover how to explore the Pyrenees on foot...
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... by car, or even on an eBike


Spain's best hike?

"What makes the walk so special? Maybe it's the fresh mountain air or the peaceful birdsong. It certainly has a lot to do with the sheer drama of the high mountains, so precious in a world increasingly tamed by us humans. The manmade confines of our everyday fade away and for once it’s us who are the guests of nature, not the other way around. Our impact is reduced to a few primitive trails, some humble signposts and a few simple refuges. The mountains make life feel refreshingly simple again..."

Read more: Spain's best hike?

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The forested canyon walls of Ordesa National Park
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The Cola de Caballo waterfalls spills into a mountain cirque


More great walking

"Catalonia’s Aigüestortes National Park is named after its ‘twisted waters’; plunging waterfalls, crystalline mountain streams and glacial lakes which mirror the park’s distinctive black pines and granite towers. Coming off of the big mountains and dropping into the Pyrenean foothills, our scenery changes, but the feeling of wilderness and untamed nature holds firm. We’re now in the precious Irati Forest, whose expanse of beech and fir trees rolls out unchecked by civilisation, all the way up to France."

Read more: More great walking

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Summer roses in Catalonia's Aigüestortes National Park
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Autumnal leaves in Navarre's Foz de Arbayun


A Pyrenean road trip

"Driving the length of the Spanish Pyrenees range should be considered one of the world’s great road trips. We say should, rather than is, because we seem to be the only ones who have really noticed. But that’s fine by us, because driving from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, Bilbao to Barcelona, takes you on a journey for adventurous explorers, along a road less travelled..."

Read more: A Pyrenean road trip

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The Pyrenees begin to rise in the Basque Country...
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... and sink into the Mediterranean in Catalonia


Immersive activities

"Ebiking is a fun, easy and highly addictive way to explore and cover a large distance in a relatively short space of time. You don’t need to be Alberto Contador to enjoy it; the bikes work in pretty much the same way as a normal bike, but with varying levels of thrust to call upon as you pedal. The extra propulsion makes it easy enough to sail along the woodland trails or ride the bumps of protruding tree roots, without it feeling like your legs are not pulling their weight..."

Read more: Immersive activities

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Ebiking in the Chistau Valley
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Rafting the Pallars Sobira River

Raptor encounters

"Of all the raptors, probably the most spectacular and certainly the most endangered is the Bearded vulture, or quebrantahuesos to give it its Spanish name. Together, those two names go a long way to describing its most distinguished features. The former describes the wispy beard which protrudes below its beak and above its often bright orange throat. The latter translates as ‘bone breakers’, describing a unique feeding habit in which it drops the bones of predated or deceased animals onto the ground from a great height..."

Read more: Raptor encounters

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Bearded vultures are a common sight in some valleys
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A majestic creature soaring above majestic scenery


Age of Empires

"The Pyrenees have always formed a semi-permeable border between southern and northern Europe. Pilgrims and smugglers have crossed the high mountain passes for millennia. But in the late 8th century, bigger moves were afoot. What we know of as Spain can trace its origins to these mountains..."

Read more: Age of Empires

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The Romanesque chapels of Tella
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One of the magnificent Romanesque churches of the Boí Valley
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