Children’s route 6: A round trip through Saratxaga, Botola bidea and Zabale.



Children’s route6

Route published by Pedro Pablo Uriarte “15 circular routes from Gorliz for families with children”

View map of the route on Wikiloc

FILE OF THE ROUTE:

Duration: 2 hours 3 min
Distanci 5,76 km
Cumulative elevation gain:  132 m
Difficulty: Easy  

Simple route of almost 6 km and almost without slopes, to spend a couple of hours taking an interesting ride with the children.

This time I am accompanied by my daughter Amets, my son-in-law Javi and my two grandchildren, Nahia of seven and Telmo of three, who have returned from Barcelona to spend a few days in Gorliz with us. We left too late to complete a more mountainous tour, so I propose you to do this simple route to enjoy a bit of the countryside surrounding the town of Gorliz, which is beautiful. We all give ourselves protective cream, especially the children, and we put on our hats. And since the child’s we can’t find her we put on a hat of mine that looks huge, but she doesn’t

We leave Iberre Zaharbide and cross Iberreta Plaza from side to side, arriving at the roundabout of the boat to go up by Tribiñu Kalea. We turn right through Haggai and immediately leave the city center. We passed two chalets and the road continues straight ahead, under the oaks. The wide, gloomy and tread path, with a fence to our right and under the branches of the oaks, leaves us after a while next to the old Saratxaga brewery, unfortunately closed for a few years.

Right next to what was the entrance to the brewery, a small road starts that leads to some chalets. The path is relaxing, passing by the walls that close the grounds of the chalets and the branches of figs, walnuts, hazelnuts and other fruit trees. After a few hundred meters the road leaves us next to a beautiful and large house of recent construction located on the left, closed to lime and stone, with several signs of “Property private. Passage is prohibited. ” It’s funny, because it’s the only house that puts up these signs, when I imagine that all the other houses are private, the passage to their land is forbidden and they don’t put up similar signs. We limit ourselves to walking strictly on the path we have always taken. The truth is that it is a wide flat path that continues under the trees, being very easy to walk with the children, something that will soon change.

Indeed, we come to a crossroads and we have to take a road that turns to the left and goes up suddenly. I offer to carry Telmo on my shoulders, who is still a little small to climb the hill with some joy and may delay us a little. Sometimes you have to do these things by going to the woods with children.

This is the only climb we climb on today’s small route. I climb the child on my shoulders and, little by little, we climb the slope calmly, first along a cemented track, and after passing a chalet, the road continues until we reach a junction next to another chalet. If you continue straight at the junction, you will reach the Orabille-Andraka road, near the entrance of the Goiko Mendi equestrian centre. But today we don’t want to go that way, so when we get to the crossroads we keep right. In a few hundred meters we arrive by a wide road to the main road Plentzia-Mungia, which with great care due to the traffic, and holding the children by the hand, we cross to the other side.

Just in front starts the small road called Botola Bidea, which descends gently. Let’s get her. At the beginning there is a building with a fence that is to our left and that usually has a couple of beautiful guard dogs that always bark at us as we pass. It is a road very little used by motor vehicles, crossing us all the way with only three or four bicycles. When we go down there is a moment when we see in the background a stretch of the Plentzia estuary. The landscape we see is very beautiful, with fruit trees on both sides of the road and some wild fig trees full of figs, which we think in a month will be ripe. The road turns next to a hamlet and in a few hundred meters we reach the northern fence of the Koala nursery.

When the road turns left, we see a wide road that starts to your right next to another hamlet and has chopped brick on the ground. We take that way, leaving the road. We found pastures on both sides. Soon the wide road becomes a very tread path that under the oaks immediately takes us to make a turn to the left next to some high green fences and immediately to the right, to begin a descent. The road now turns back to road. We passed by the beautiful old Zabale hamlet, which gives its name to the neighbourhood.
We continue going down next to a meadow to our left that has an electric shepherd around and that encloses some sheep cared for by an old mastine dog that only follows us with its gaze.

We have already gone down the slope and we see the main road Plentzia-Mungia close by, but the whole gang entertained us for a long time to pick blackberries in a thicket. The kids are thrilled. Nahia says she can make blackberry jam and she’s going to teach us. Once satisfied with the collected blackberries we restarted the road to reach the first roundabout, which we crossed, and little by little to the second large roundabout next to the industrial estate Sagastikoetxe.

We just have to go down the red sidewalk to the old slaughterhouse and then climb up to the roundabout of the boat, crossing the road Andra Mari with Tribiñu kalea. We have closed the circle and through Iberreta Plaza we reached immediately Iberre Zeharbide from where we left a little more than two hours ago.

it is a simple route of 5. 7 km with minimal ascents around Gorliz to make it quiet and happy with the children.

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