I had a grand plan to walk at least half of the 15km Flysch Route, a cliff top walk along the coast south of San Sebastian between Zumaia and Deba. However, the tourist information office in Zumaia looked at us and recommended that we just walk out to the view point. I guess we looked that unprepared. Nonetheless, I’m grateful for their advice because the seemingly short 4km excursion actually kept us occupied for two hours.

The Flysch Route gets its name from a particular rock formation in northwestern Spain called flysch. The rocks here are actually formed from layers of sandstone and shale – alternating – so that there are very distinct layers in the cliffs. This makes for particularly striking scenery.

We started our walk by heading out toward Zumaia’s historical town centre, in the direction of the Eglise de San Pedro (St. Peter’s Church). Following a leafy, tree lined road uphill took us to a lookout point – but, it was not the one we wanted (we missed a left turn somewhere). Nonetheless, we got a nice view of Itzurun beach, popular with the kids.

Retracing our steps slightly, we walked into and around the hotel Talasoterapia Zelai, from which we could see the road that leads up to the church of San Telmo. San Telmo marks the start of one of the most scenic paths on the Flysch Route.

We followed this path out to the tip – Algorri point, and walked down towards the beach / inlet on the left. There’s a staircase down to the water from which we got a closer view of the rock formations. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we couldn’t proceed any further on our walk although it was very tempting.

As we had a dinner reservation in San Sebastian to get back to, we decided to head back to town. The path back is easy, there’s a lower road so we didn’t need to climb back up the hill to San Telmo. From a bus stop in town, we took a very pleasant ride back to San Sebastian.

Getting to Zumaia: Zumaia is just a short 30 minute car ride from San Sebastian or you could take a bus, which is twice as long but is a more scenic coastal trip. The train is also an alternative but the schedule is less frequent.  If you take a taxi, just be aware that it will cost around EUR50, while the bus is less than EUR2.50 per person.

Useful tip: The tourist office in Zumaia is located in Kantauri Plaza, behind a green patch opposite the marina. They have good maps of the town and the various walks in Zumaia. And they will have advice on where the bus stops are as well as the schedule to take the bus back to San Sebastian if you do not have your own car.

Time allocation: Given the travel time, it’s probably best to allocate around three to four hours for this excursion depending on whether you have your own car. Taking the bus will take longer. So it’s actually a nice half day trip and helps to burn off some of the calories from the fantastic meals in San Sebastian.