The Donkey Zone

Make Hay While The Sun Shines

Honey bee adventures

A journey with donkeys

Becoming a donkey owner

Be a Traveller not a Tourist

The Cider House Rules

Three Basque Peaks

Making chutney with a chain saw

Red Hot Chile Peppers

The Donkey Zone

I am a big fan of anything that facilitates back country travel with a minimum of disturbance and certainly no engine. Canoes, Nordic skis, mountain bike and sail boat are all firm favourites. They all facilitate your flow through an environment. Donkeys facilitate this flow too and enable us to drift unobtrusively over hill and […]

Make Hay While The Sun Shines

There seems to be a universal appeal to the notion of living more simply, closer to nature and its rhythms. The sense that that these days we all live in a swirling maelstrom of information, complexity and disquiet seems to be quite universal amongst citizens of the so called “developed” world. There is a notion […]

Honey bee adventures

There are a few questions people always ask beekeepers; Do you get stung? Yes. Frequently. Do bee stings hurt? Yes. Intensely for about a minute then they calm down and you forget them. How many bees are in a hive? A strong hive would have a population of around 50,000 There’s surely something magnetic that […]

A journey with donkeys

Thanks to “airbnb” I enjoy a steady current of itinerant travellers who stop for a while in my house and tell me their tales of travel and adventure. I get all sorts of folk, from all corners of the globe. Solo, couple and families with kids. They are all without exception, good people. They almost […]

Becoming a donkey owner

  Me and Mr Momo I live in a place where believe it or not, donkeys frequently crop up in conversations. People in bars talk of donkeys seeking homes much as folk in other parts try to find homes for litters of kittens. In this way some friends who live in a nearby village got […]

Be a Traveller not a Tourist

  Bizipozatours is an insiders guide to the curious country and culture that is Euskal Herria (The Basque Country). It is about connecting visitors to the wealth of unspoilt, often undiscovered, country and culture which exists here.  It is not about the well trod tourist trail where you choose your meal from a menu with […]

The Cider House Rules

There is a strong tradition of cider making here in the Basque Country.  Sagardotegies (cider houses) are very typical in the province of Guipuzkoa but cider is also made here in Araba and the “Sagardotegia Iturrieta” was inaugurated in 1998 with a view to reviving that tradition. This is a very small family run cider […]

Three Basque Peaks

The first time I crossed the mountain pass of Urkiola and saw the parched white lime-stone peaks of the Duranguesado I figured, “yup, this is a place I could happily spend some time”.  That gut feeling lead to a decision and today almost fifteen years later,  my passion for this singular land known as Euskal Herria […]

Making chutney with a chain saw

The first frosts arrived with October and the garden is entering a new phase.  The plants are dying back but at the same time in peak production.  It’s just not possible to eat it all so you have to find some way of preserving it.  Some things you can freeze but the result is often […]

Red Hot Chile Peppers

Late september and we’re in pepper season.  I’d love to be able to say that these peppers are from our “huerta“.  They’re not.  Fact is they grow better 17km down the road in the neighbouring province of Navarra.  Picked up a crate for 12€ and set too with some folks to jar ’em. They’re not […]