Bermeo

Where it sits. Bermeo stands on the western shoulder of the Urdaibai estuary mouth, about 34 kilometres northeast of Bilbao, wedged between steep green hills and one of the few genuinely sheltered harbours on an otherwise brutal stretch of the Bay of Biscay. Around 16,500 people live here, and the town still earns its living from the sea rather than from visitors — a distinction obvious within five minutes of arriving. The old harbour, Portu Zaharra, is a stepped basin of coloured houses stacked above the water; the modern port beside it handles a working fleet of tuna and anchovy boats and the cold stores and net lofts that go with them. The municipality of Bermeo also takes in Gaztelugatxe, eight kilometres west along the cliff road.

Capital of Biscay, briefly. Bermeo received its town charter in 1236 from Lope Diaz II de Haro and served as the capital of the Lordship of Biscay from 1476 until 1602, when the seat moved to Bilbao — a demotion the town has never entirely stopped mentioning. Its medieval status survives in fragments: the Gate of San Juan, the last of the seven gates of the walled town; the Gothic church of Santa Eufemia, where the lords of Biscay swore to respect the local fueros; and the ruined Gothic cloister of the San Francisco convent, founded in 1357 and the oldest in the province. Fire, the Carlist wars and the industrialisation of the nineteenth century took most of the rest.

The Torre Ercilla and the fishing museum. The stone tower house on the harbour's edge, the Torre Ercilla, is the last of the town's medieval defensive dwellings and belonged to the family of the poet and soldier Alonso de Ercilla, author of La Araucana. It now houses the Arrantzaleen Museoa, the Fishermen's Museum — the only museum in Spain dedicated wholly to the fishing trade. The displays are practical rather than nostalgic: how a bonito is caught on live bait, how the cofradia divided a catch, how a coastal fleet moved from sail to steam to diesel within two generations. The rooftop terrace gives the best free view of the harbour and its ranked, primary-coloured hulls.

The port and the plate. Bermeo runs one of Spain's larger tuna fleets, with boats that work the Atlantic as far as the Indian Ocean, and it remains a major landing point for bokarta, the Bay of Biscay anchovy, whose spring season shapes the local calendar. That translates directly into what is served on the harbour front: anchovies cured in salt or in vinegar, grilled besugo, marmitako stew built on bonito and potato, and the reliable Basque proof of a serious kitchen — whole turbot over coals. Prices along the old port are lower than in San Sebastian for equivalent quality, and lunch, not dinner, is the meal that matters.

Cape Matxitxako and the coast road. Two kilometres northwest the land ends at Cabo Matxitxako, the northernmost point of Biscay, where a lighthouse and the stump of its nineteenth-century predecessor sit above cliffs that fall more than a hundred metres. A monument here marks the 1937 action in which the armed trawler Nabarra was sunk by the cruiser Canarias during the Civil War blockade of the Basque coast, an episode still commemorated locally each March. Beyond the cape the BI-3101 runs west toward Gaztelugatxe and Bakio through a sequence of viewpoints; eastward, the road drops into the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve at Mundaka and Sukarrieta.

The base for Gaztelugatxe. The islet belongs to Bermeo, and the town is the nearest place with a full range of beds, banks and pharmacies, yet most visitors to the causeway drive straight past it on their way out from Bilbao. That is a loss in one direction and an advantage in the other: Bermeo stays comparatively unbothered, and sleeping here puts the walk down to the bridge within a fifteen-minute drive first thing in the morning, well before the coaches leave the city. Bizkaibus route A3518 links the two along the cliff road, and the parking near the port does not fill the way the beachfronts do.

Getting there and timing. Euskotren line E4 runs from Bilbao to Bermeo via Gernika, following the estuary for its final stretch and taking a little over an hour — an unusually good rail approach that removes any need to drive. Bizkaibus serves the coast road for Gaztelugatxe. The town has a modest hotel stock and works well as a base for the whole eastern Biscay coast, being closer to the islet than Bilbao and considerably quieter than Bakio in August. The maritime festival of the Madalenas on 22 July fills the harbour with decorated boats crossing to Elantxobe; the anchovy weeks of April and May are the better food window. Winter here is genuinely wild, and that is the season in which the town looks most like itself.