After the Maratón de Logroño: Briones

The Route: Logroño → Briones → Logroño Logistics: Hire car or taxi, about 40 minutes each way by the A-12 and N-232 through the vineyards. A short, mostly indoor day. Marathon Month: October Duration: Day trip

Logroño ──(about 40 mins by car)──> Briones ──(about 40 mins)──> Logroño

The Maratón de Logroño finishes on the Espolón after two laps of the city, and the day after, a runner has two options: stay on the flat and eat, or go and look at where the wine on the table came from without walking very far. Briones does the second well. The village sits on a ridge above the Ebro in Rioja Alta, and the wine museum below it is large, level and indoors.

October in Rioja Alta is the end of the harvest. In most years the picking runs from late September into October, so the vineyards along the road are either being stripped or have just been, and the leaves are starting to turn. Mornings are cool; afternoons usually reach the high teens or low twenties.

There is no train to Briones and buses are thin on the ground, so this is a trip for a hire car or a taxi from Logroño. The drive west is about 40 minutes, most of it through vineyards. Agree a return time with a taxi driver before setting off.

The Vivanco Museum

The Museo Vivanco de la Cultura del Vino stands among the vines at the foot of the village, part of the Vivanco winery. It covers the whole story of wine, from archaeology and tools to the glass, the cork and the art, over several large halls, and it is designed for visitors to walk slowly on level floors with lifts between them. Outside, a garden of vine varieties is laid out on flat paths.

Allow two to three hours. Winery tours with a tasting run at set times and need booking. Opening days change through the year and Monday is the day most likely to find it shut, so check vivancoculturadevino.es before choosing the date; Tuesday is the safer bet.

The village

Briones itself is a short drive up from the museum; the road climbs too steeply for tired legs. The village is small: a main square, a large sixteenth-century church and stone houses along streets that run level along the ridge once you are up there. The reward is the view from the edge of the ridge, across the Ebro and the vineyards towards the Sierra de Cantabria. Half an hour covers it.

Eat at the museum's restaurant, which looks out over the vines, or in the village if something is open. On a Tuesday in October, the museum is the more reliable of the two.

The drive back to Logroño takes about 40 minutes, leaving the evening free for Calle Laurel.