La Train de la Rhune & the Medieval City of La Rochelle

November 3^rd, 2025 

I woke up early to catch the 9:30 “Train de la Rhune”, a tourist train that ascends around 800 meters up a mountain by the coastal city of La Bayonne to a height of 905 meters.  It’s a tourist train that was constructed in 1924 and travels 4.2 kilometres at a whopping 9 km/h.  If you know me, I like trains, so I had to check this one out.  

 

The cute little European train station.

Looking up the train tracks at the station.

It’s kind of like a funicular but instead of using a cable to pull the train up, this one uses a rack and pinion to propel it up the mountain and to slow down its descent.

This is the drive mechanism of the train, and how it can climb a steep grade (25% in some parts!).  Notice the middle track of teeth that the two gears use to propel the train at a whopping 9 km/h.

Here she comes to get us.

The train was probably only 20% full so I had a whole 10 seat row to myself.  The attraction was closing for the season in a week’s time so it wasn’t surprising.

Cute little open-air cars.

Going up!

What a beautiful morning...I was lucky.

Our destination are those tiny buildings on the ridge above the cliff face, just to the right of center in the photo.

Enjoying my tea on the ride up while listening to a slightly educational audio guide.

Wow...gorgeous.

Getting closer...  It's very difficult to see, but there's actually a red paraglider just above the white building in the middle of the picture.  It looked like a nice calm, descending early morning flight.

I like trains.

A steep section.

Last night I camped by the coast near the horizon.

The toothed middle track.

Once we reached the top, we had an hour and a half to explore, hike around a bit and enjoy the views.  I was super happy to have decided to come up on the first train as the morning light was lovely, as were the low clouds in the valleys behind the mountain, away from the sea.

Lots of communication towers up here, as it is the tallest mountain around.

Lovely low clouds in the valleys behind the mountains.

I loved watching the clouds rolling over the mountain top.

The clouds are starting to burn off.

Still enjoying my tea!

Yeah baby!

Looking down the tracks.

There were a half dozen horses grazing at the top.

But the grass was so short, like a putting green, so these guys had to work at it.

Looking back from a little platform that I walked to and did a bit of morning yoga.

The next load of tourists coming up, there are way more people than were on my train.

The station at the top.

Back down the mountain at 12:10, it was time to get on the road for almost 2 hours to reach the Spanish city of Bilbao.  Checking out Google Maps for directions before setting off, I realized that I might have already crossed into Spain a little bit on top of the mountain as the border seems to go right over the peak.

 

I didn’t plan on spending much time in Bilbao, but Naomi recommended that I check out the Guggenheim Museum.

Some tricky parking with Octi in Bilbao...I lucked out that someone just left this spot by the lane, the rest of the parking lot was full.  I was surprised that parking was free here too, like Nantes, and it was a short five minute walk to the subway station.

My first impression of Bilbao...seemed pretty.

A nice church near the museum.

The Guggenheim Museum, designed by a Canadian/American architect named Frank Gehry.   That green thing is a big puppy (I think), made from some structure with plants and flowers growing out of it.

The main entrance...which was locked since it was Monday.  I had seen that when I did my research a few days ago, but forgot...plus it was the only day that I was going to be able to swing by Bilbao since I still had a ways to go to arrive in Lisbon for Thursday.

The tallest building around.

The museum was a lovely building, so I'm glad I came to check it out.  I'm not a big art fan anyways, especially modern art, so I wasn't crushed that it happened to be closed.

Even the nearby bridge had a modern art look to it.

A big spider.

Looking down the river.

My one complaint would be these steps...they are long enough that you have to take two steps for each one, so one leg is always stepping up or stepping down.

The Christmas tree is up early at this lovely roundabout where the metro station is.

Inside the metro, it was quite nice and easy to use.

Back on the road, I found a camp spot that was about 45 minutes west from Bilbao along the coast.  As I was passing by the harbour area of Bilbao on an expressway, I was shocked at the number of 15-20 storey apartment buildings that were jam packed together…it was quite ugly looking.  I guess the area I was in, further south, must be the nice part of the city as this was definitely not.  This is one unfortunate thing of driving solo while touring around new places, it’s hard to take photos of things you see and want to remember (for good or bad reasons).

As was accurately stated on the “Search for Sites” app that I’ve been using, there were only 4 parking spaces.  A motorhome was occupying one, and two cars were in the other spots with one space in the middle.  Luckily one car left, making it a bit easier to jockey Octi into the tight spot, but as I was intently watching my backup camera, with the steering wheel fully cranked to turn left as I backed up, I heard a little bang.  Whoops.  I’d slightly hit a plastic garbage bin with my side view mirror.  I pulled forward, took a look, thankfully nothing major other than a couple of little scrapes.  Hurt my pride more than anything!  Hopefully my Octi parking skills and confidence will increase over the span of this trip.

The tide was in at the small beach where I camped.

Looking out to sea .

A cool looking mountain.  Octi's parking spot for the night is behind that white motorhome on the bottom left.

I got set up for the night and then went and hung out on a patio of the one and only nearby restaurant to catch the sun disappearing over the mountains.  It was another good day.