By Peter Chadwick.

After a difficult last hour of my journey, due to spray-painted ETA slogans covering the majority of road signs, I found the crags of Onate in the heart of the Basque country. With a twelve-hour drive from Nice finally over I stepped from my van and into the first of many turds scattered along the footpath. I was back in Spain. When travelling around Europe it is possible to observe the many different cultures and habits of the climbers. Whilst in Ceuse for example, it was not unusual to see a German, hot and bothered after the long walk up hill strip off to the briefest of underwear and parade around the crag whilst other nationalities giggled. Italians would climb wearing fleece pants and a jumper in the direct sun of midday when it was hot enough to kill a dog. Climbers from Scandinavian countries would hold polite conversations in three different languages and the Irish would climb all day every day and drink all night every night. But why oh why, do the Spanish climbers crap on footpaths, they have so many other fantastic traits. They are friendly, humorous and inviting party people with a real zest for life and a healthy disdain for authority it's just this one trait I don't like. I'm sure not all Spanish climbers are guilty but I must say the ones who are get about a lot!

After meeting two of Spain's top climbers, Josune Bereciartu and her partner Ricardo Otegi in the USA and hearing their description of climbing in the Basque country as being the best and toughest in Spain I had to check it out. Iker Pou the man who repeated Action Direct and many other hard Frankenjura routes is also a local and claims that the climbing at his local crags is the hardest that he has encountered. I was ready to go and I was more than ready to fail.

Euskadi, the name the Basques give to their land is an amazingly beautiful region that is mountainous, green and wooded. It rains frequently, but the summers here offer a welcome escape from the unrelenting heat of southern Spain and as such it is a popular holiday destination for the Spanish. Its coast has some of the cleanest and quietest beaches that I have ever baked on and the violent waves attract a great many surfers. You won't encounter many British here and those that I met are keen to keep this unspoilt area of Spain under their hat. Whilst reading in a café one morning I unwittingly became a player in a scene reminiscent of the Python "nudge, nudge your wife a goer" sketch. A women who sounded like Dot Cotton's sister sidled up and said "you English ?", I nodded and she continued with "north coast of Spain, mums the word, mums the word". When I tried to say how much I was enjoying it she kept shushing me and looking around like the worried spymaster from the Le'Carre novel I was reading. She departed with a desperate grin partially covered by a finger that intoned me to keep my mouth shut.