Bikepacking Vuelta de Vasco (Northern Spain)

Just finished the Vuelta de Vasco. I rode it clockwise starting from San Sebastian and it took me 10 days with a rest day in Bilbao.

Some random thoughts:

• Since I decided to ride this route last minute my flight was into Biarritz. I rode from there to Hendaie and from there I took the amazingly convenient an cheap Euskotren that will take bicycles and will get you San-Sebastian in 37 min for 2.9€
• My plan was to get to Decathlon get a gas canister, dehydrated food, some Clif bars, CO2 cartridge and get going. But I arrived on July 31st which is the feast day of San Ignacio (St. Ignatius), a significant Basque holiday. All shops were closed. I decided start riding anyway and the next morning I backtracked 1 hour to the nearest Decathlon only to find all the trail food and gas canisters were sold out. I had cold food for the rest of the trip which I got accustomed to pretty quickly. I'm thinking about leaving my stove on the next trip.
• The most beautiful part of the route is the Sierra de Aralar (pics 3-7)
• In August the 3 main cities have their Grand Week of celebrations. All held on a different time. I ran into these In Vittoria-Gasteiz and San Sebastian. While amazing to experience these celebration can affect opening hours, the city if filled with tourist (San-Sebastian!) and all hotels are fully booked or extremely expensive.
• All place have both a Spanish name and a Basque name: Bilbao/Bilbo, Vittoria/Gasteiz, San -Sebastián/Donostia.
• This is a hard route with a lot of gnarly climbs and even gnarlier descents.
• A couple of the parts of the route on bikepacking.com are in my eyes just not suited for biking. I remember one part was a foot wide hiking path overgrown with brambles. And eventhough it was like 30degrees I had to put on my outer shell, full gloves and helmet to get through this mess inch by inch. I think it to me like 3 hours to get through 3km but there was absolutely no way back or out…
• That makes me 50/50 about recommending this route. The amazing parts are while worthwhile but the bad parts are horrendous.
• That being said I have no regrets and I'm happy I rode it!