Dog Walkers in Bilbao, Spain

In Bilbao the problem is never the heat: it is the water. Around twelve hundred litres per square metre fall here each year, spread across a great many days, and much of it arrives not as storms but as sirimiri — that fine, persistent drizzle that looks like nothing and soaks you through in twenty minutes. Living with a dog in this city means a towel by the door, a raincoat that dries fast, and accepting that in some months you go out wet every single day. That is not a local complaint: it is logistics.

In exchange, the summers are among the easiest on the peninsula. The temperature rarely clears thirty degrees and the nights always cool down, so the July-and-August paralysis that rules the south simply does not exist here. The long walk is possible at almost any hour nearly all year, except during episodes of south wind, which in midwinter can send the thermometer startlingly high for two or three days.

The city is wedged between hills, and that defines the routes. Artxanda is three minutes from the centre by funicular, and at the top there are meadows, pine woods and open tracks: the great release valve of a narrow city. On the other side, Pagasarri offers genuine mountain for anyone after serious climbing.

Below, the ría organises the rest. The restored walkways between Deusto, Uribitarte and Zorrotzaurre form a flat, continuous corridor that links neighbourhoods without slopes — something more valuable in Bilbao than it sounds: Santutxu, Begoña and much of the city live on steep gradients, and for an older dog the difference between one route and the other is enormous.