Tudela

With arid desert to the north and lush market gardens to the south, Tudela is quite unlike the rest of Navarre. For a start, you can leave behind your Basque dictionary as Spanish is the only official language here.

But the other Navarrese won't hold that against them, at least not all the time they produce top quality veg and in particular, ugly tomatoes. Feo de Tudela tomatoes are highly prized among connoisseurs who know that beauty is more than skin deep and come to the tomato festival at the end of August to taste that year's crop.

If you can't wait until then and find yourself coming through here in the last week in July, then you might get caught up in the Santa Ana festival. It's hard to know what Jesus' gran would make of the festivities in her honour, but hopefully she'd approve of Tudela's very particular dance craze - La Revoltosa, which can be summarised as running around the bandstand in la Plaza de los Fueros, in time with the band that speeds up and slows as it sees fit until everyone runs out of steam.

As with other festivals in Navarre, it's traditional to wear white with a red necktie and mornings start with a bull run through the town ready for a bullfight later that day.

Tudela has another festival with a 'difference' at Easter. On Easter Saturday, an effigy of someone/something topical (originally Judas) is presented to the crowd with a firecracker in its mouth, then set alight and tossed into the crowd for a bit of a bashing.

Easter Sunday is a more heaven-oriented business with a live-action Angel Gabriel sent down a zip wire to remove a veil from the Virgin Mary who bears the good news of Jesus' resurrection.

Apart from festivals, the old town is nice to wander around with it's mixture of great buildings and not-so-great buildings decorated in street art.

There's also a lot of architectural one-upmanship. The Church of la Magdalena (which was the Christian church during Moorish times) has an impressive freeze.

It's only outdone by the Cathedral, which was built on top of the old mosque. The depictions leave you in no doubt about your fate if you aren't faithful.

While some people were keen on removing all trace of the Moorish past after the re-conquest, Englishman and local clergyman, Robert of Ketton preferred to learn about and share Moorish and Islamic works, writing the first translation of the Koran into a western language (Latin).

Curiosity about Tudela's Moorish past and the way Muslims, Jews and Christians co-existed have led to excavations being carried out on what is believed to be the old Jewish quarter. One individual who probably lived there was Benjamin of Tudela who is the town's very own Marco Polo and wrote about his travels to China.

To get a better perspective of the town, you could go up to the Monreal Tower which houses a camera obscura. It also provides a chance to take in the arid lands that lead to Bardenas Reales, which was used as a Game of Thrones backdrop and was the undoing of Gerry Gilliam in his attempt to make a film of Don Quixote.

Highlights

• Festivals

• Bardenas Real

Station stroll ideas

Tourist info have provided a list of sights with a map (online) here.

Guided tours

I'm not aware of anyone offering guided tours in English however, there is a tour in Spanish) an the details are here.

Luggage

I'm not aware of anywhere in Tudela where you could drop your bags, but you could try checking the nannybag app or asking local hotels.