The Gâteau Basque Pilgrimage

Gâteau Basque is the cake the Basque Country takes personally. The outside is a rich, golden, almost shortbread-like pastry, stamped with the Basque cross (lauburu) or a crosshatch pattern; inside is either pastry cream (crème pâtissière) or dark cherry jam made from Itxassou cherries, a local variety grown in the foothills. Every family has their own recipe, every patisserie claims theirs is the best, and the debate over cream versus cherry is a genuine, ongoing, lightly heated cultural conversation. It was originally a travellers' cake - sturdy enough to carry, rich enough to sustain - and it remains the thing every Basque grandmother bakes and every visitor is offered.

You have Bilbao and San Sebastián for the Spanish Basque Country; Biarritz is the French side, and it's a different mood entirely - Belle Époque architecture, Atlantic surf, a faded glamour that's been attracting everyone from Napoleon III to modern surfers. The patisseries here have been baking gâteau Basque since the 1800s, and eating a slice with a coffee on a terrace overlooking the Grande Plage, the waves rolling in, is one of the most effortlessly pleasant lunches in France. It's not a complicated pilgrimage. It's just a very good cake in a very good place.