href="http://www.booking.com">www.booking.com) or other intermediaries to attract customers. Some are even dropping their own websites in preference to a page on a third-party site. Small hotels are poor at responding to emails and if a lack of language skills makes using the telephone a challenge than Booking.com is incredibly helpful. Accommodation listed on Booking.com is referenced in the text although it’s worth checking to see whether others have moved to the site since this guide was finalised, as it’s definitely a developing trend.
Eating in Spain
Spanish eating arrangements may come as a surprise – every meal is eaten late. If you want an early start, unless the hotel doubles up as the local bar, an early breakfast can be difficult to organise. Common practice is to get a sandwich prepared the night before (two if they are providing you with lunch), pay, and then leave the key in the door. Lunch orders in Spain are still being taken at 3.30 or even 4pm and dinner is often at 9pm (although the Spanish may eat even later). Interestingly dinner at a casa rural in a domestic setting is always earlier than in a hotel.
Leaving Agüero on the route to Murillo de Gállego (Section 4, Stage 5)
Lunch is the main meal of the day particularly on Sundays. It’s often a very social event when either families or large groups of friends get together, creating a wonderful and convivial atmosphere in a restaurant. If the day’s walk isn’t too long a good strategy is to aim to get to your destination by mid-afternoon and enjoy a satisfying lunch.
When there is only one hotel, the food provided there is often the only food available. If you’re a vegetarian you may find the options a little limited but if you’re happy to eat fish or meat then you definitely won’t go hungry on the GR1. Cured meats are a specialty, black pudding (morcilla), grilled lamb and pork (often cooked on the fire in the corner of the room), beans and lentils, Spanish tortilla, and if you’re early in the year wild asparagus. The food is excellent and on the route you will taste food direct from the local farmyard and food (in Catalonia in particular) that builds on Spain’s reputation for culinary avant garde.
In comparison with other EU countries Spain provides excellent value for money. When walking in the mountains, accommodation with dinner and breakfast can be as little as €30 a day (and at the cheaper end of the accommodation spectrum a bottle of wine is invariably included even if you’re on your own). Generally speaking the walker can easily live within a budget of €50 a day.
When to go
Much of the route is accessible all year round but there are good and not so good times to go. Factors to consider are rainfall in the winter including snow in the Cantabrian Mountains, and the heat in the summer particularly crossing the plain in Navarre. The condition of the trail will also vary from season to season and even if there isn’t a lot of snow some stretches will be so muddy that walking in winter can be uncomfortable. In addition to the weather the other factor to consider is accommodation. Much of it is available all year round but some is not open in the winter months.
The best months for most of the walk are April, May and June and September/October. July and August are good months for walking in the Cantabrian Mountains but not on lower parts of the route. The best source of information on climate and weather patterns is the official, Spanish-language website www.aemet.es.
Breaking the GR1 into chunks
This guide is designed to provide the prospective traveller with all the information needed to plan a trip along the GR1. The complete end-to-end trail is highly recommended but it does take around 53 days to complete. Most walkers will need to break their GR1 exploration down into chunks and to this end the route is described in seven sections, each with a start or endpoint that can be easily reached by train or bus. The route is described west to east. You could, of course, choose to walk it the other way but finishing at the Mediterranean adds a certain amount of drama to the trip.
Northern Spain is very accessible to the international traveller. The main options include a flight to Madrid and a train or bus journey to a section start point or a flight to a regional airport followed by train or bus. The main towns you might go through en route are often incredibly interesting in their own right (Oviedo, Bilbao, León, Burgos, Zaragoza, Pamplona) and more than justify an extended stay in Spain.
Generally speaking the train network radiates out from Madrid and information and tickets can be obtained from the excellent RENFE website (www.renfe.com). An important exception to this is the narrow gauge line that runs from León to Bilbao, a rail trip not to be missed which is also an excellent way of getting to destinations at the western end of the route.
The high-speed national coach network is also a good way of getting to section start and finish points. The largest network is run by Alsa who have a lot of regional and local buses as well. Information about the Alsa timetable is on their website (www.alsa.es) where you can also buy tickets, although this seems an unnecessary complication as you can just buy them on the day. The information is not comprehensive, however, and if a route can’t be planned on their website it does not mean that it doesn’t exist. Other regional operators also provide inter-city coach travel.
Tourist information in Spain is organised at various levels (national, regional, large towns/cities and important tourist destinations) and an email to the regional tourist information office usually elicits a helpful response. (See Appendix C.)
Tozal de Guara, the highest peak in the Sierra Guara in Aragón (Sction 5, Stage 5)
Planning your walk
Everyone walks at a different pace. To help plan your trip the sections of this guide are broken into stages, each as close to 25km long as possible (see Appendix A for tables showing the structure of the sections and the location of facilities along the route). Also included is an estimate of how long each stage will take. This has been calculated using the famous formula developed by the Victorian walker Naismith, which allows for height gained and lost, and applying Tranter’s modifications, which allow for fitness (my calculations are based on average fitness). At various points on the route you will see signposts describing how long a particular stage will take – these estimates can vary wildly and are best ignored.
Knowing that there is somewhere to sleep at the end of the day makes for a much more relaxing walk, and most people will want to book their accommodation in advance. But when there is plenty of accommodation just turning up is an option as for most of the year the hotels are rarely full. The advantage of not booking ahead is that you can be more flexible, walk longer days if the weather is really good and not have to reschedule everything if the weather is bad. Incidentally the best ‘adventures’ often happen when things get difficult with accommodation and you have to ask for help.
Friendly accommodation at Nela (Section 2, Stage 2)
This guide includes as much information as possible on accommodation to help you plan your trip. Not all accommodation listed has been ‘sampled’ although where it has particular recommendations are made. Before publication contact has been made to check on current status but accommodation does sometimes close on a temporary or permanent basis so do check yourself if you can.
If you don’t speak Spanish there is an inevitable tendency to choose accommodation which looks better organised and to book online if they have that facility or send an email
