What to do in Chartered Community of Navarra

The Comunidad Foral de Navarra compresses extraordinary geographic diversity into 10,391 km², ranging from the Pyrenees to the Bardenas desert. The Roncesvalles pass at 1,057 m is the historic gateway where over 300,000 pilgrims each year begin or rejoin the French Way to Santiago. Its centuries-old beeches form a canopy over 20 metres high above the path, and morning mist gives the forest an almost tangible density. The Foz de Arbayún, Navarra's longest canyon, runs 5.5 kilometres between 300-metre walls of Jurassic limestone with no vehicle access track. The Salazar river cuts through the gorge with swimming pools and the largest griffon vulture colony in western Europe —over 300 pairs— nesting on the ledges. Kayaking the Irati river allows daily runs of 20–30 kilometres through beech and pine forests with Class II–III rapids. Las Bardenas Reales, a Biosphere Reserve since 2000, presents a landscape of gullies, mesas and badlands that looks plucked from a medieval desert. Its 41,840 hectares can be explored by mountain bike on marked tracks of varying difficulty. The Irati forest —one of Europe's largest beech-fir woodlands at 17,000 hectares— completes Navarre's geography with 1–3 day hiking routes.