We spend the morning walking the Basque hillsides with a local herbalist, someone who has spent years learning to read this particular landscape, plant by plant, season by season.

We are in autumn. The hills are different then. What grows here, what is ready to be gathered, what needs to be left alone. We walk slowly. We touch things. We smell. We ask questions. There is no rush, and no list to complete.

Back at the house, we work with what we have found, a simple introduction to the principles of herbalism rooted in this place. Nothing abstract. Just plants, hands, and attention.

A morning of clay with Eguzkilore, a ceramicist whose practice is rooted in the Basque Country and its forms. No experience is needed, only your hands, your attention, and a willingness to work without hurrying.

We learn the essential gestures : centring, opening, shaping. Clay does not respond well to force. It asks for presence. That, in many ways, is the whole lesson.

You will leave with a piece that carries the mark of your hands, imperfect, singular, entirely yours, and the memory of a morning spent making something real.

The Basque Country carries an ancient world beneath its surface. That evening, Julie shares the myths that shaped this land.

Mari, goddess of the mountain, who dwells in the caves deep within the earth and rises to command the storms. Basajaun, the wild lord of the forest, older than memory. The Laminak, beings of water and stone, who haunt the springs and the old bridges.

These are not decorative stories. They are a way of understanding a people, a landscape, a relationship with the natural world that goes back further than writing.

We gather in the evening. No notes. No screens. The stories are told as they were meant to be, in the dark, slowly, with full attention.

We drive to Zugarramurdi, just across the border into Navarre, to visit the caves that gave rise to one of the most significant witch trials in Basque history.

But it is also simply beautiful. A limestone gorge carved by an underground stream. Light falling in from above. The sound of water. The silence between sounds.

You don’t need to believe in witches to feel something here. The place speaks for itself, and it speaks much more clearly after the evening of myths the night before.

We return from the caves and step into the kitchen. Julie guides us through the making of a gâteau basque, following her grandmother’s recipe, the one that has been passed down, handwritten, for as long as anyone can remember.

Cherry jam or pastry cream. A short crust with a particular softness. A recipe that belongs to a place, a family, a memory. That is what we make together.

There is something grounding about baking after a morning of legend and stone. The kitchen brings you back to warmth, to smell, to the oldest kind of making. You go home knowing how to do this. That matters.

Between workshops, the house holds everything you might need to keep creating. Watercolours, sketchbooks, drawing pencils, writing journals, all provided, all available, at any hour.

There is no schedule for this. You might find yourself sketching after dinner, or writing in the early morning before anyone else is up. Painting what you saw on the foraging walk while the memory is still fresh. Starting a sentence you have been carrying for months.

Nothing is expected of you. Everything is possible.