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Overview

Route options

Three loop options, each starting/ending at Zaragoza (tentative arrival airport — not yet confirmed) and each with its own page including a route map:

All three overlaid

Option A — East Option B — West Option C — Compromise

Shared stops (Zaragoza, Graus, Samitier) are drawn once even though multiple options pass through them — click a leg for which option it belongs to plus real distance/time.

The real constraint driving these options: east vs. west

Isaba/Monasterio de Leyre (Navarra) and Vall de Boí/Vielha/La Seu d'Urgell (Lleida/Val d'Aran) are on opposite sides of the Aragonese Pyrenees — roughly 300 km apart, in close to opposite directions from Zaragoza. Samitier and the Valle de Tena/Graus area sit roughly in the middle and can reasonably extend toward either side, but not comfortably toward both in one trip without a lot of backtracking. Options A and B pick one side each; Option C sidesteps the question by dropping the western cluster (Isaba/Leyre/castles) entirely rather than sampling both thinly.

What's assumed / not yet confirmed

  • Trip window: these three options are paced against a tentative 29 Aug – 6 Sep 2026 window (9 days) — not yet locked on Proposed plan. If the real dates differ, the event anchors below shift accordingly. A candidate 27 Aug – 6 Sep (10 days) window, 2 days longer, has since come up via real flight options — see Flights & a seaside-before-mountains extension.
  • Arrival airport: Zaragoza, tentative (per your note) — not yet booked. Real flight options since found also include Reus (REU), either as a loop or as one leg of an open-jaw with Zaragoza — see Flights & a seaside-before-mountains extension. If Reus ends up as the arrival airport, each option below would need its outbound leg re-routed from "start at Zaragoza" to "start from the coast" — not yet done on any of the three route maps below.
  • San Juan de la Peña is excluded from all three options — currently closed due to the Las Peñas de Riglos wildfire, no reopening date announced. See Sightseeing. Loarre castle (used in Option B) is not reported closed, but sits close enough to the same fire zone that its status is worth re-checking nearer the trip — see the warning on Sightseeing → Castillo de Loarre.
  • Castillo de Canfranc has been dropped from the wishlist entirely — removed from Sightseeing per the confirmed Top picks list; no longer a candidate to route around.
  • Pamplona / Castillo de Javier excluded — lowest priority in the original wishlist; would need a 4th, Navarra-only option to include properly rather than bolting on.
  • Event dates used as anchors, with confidence noted:
  • Confirmed: Festa Major de La Seu d'Urgell 28 Aug–1 Sep, Ball Cerdà Sun 30 Aug ~11:00; Alto Gállego stargazing Wed 2 Sep 22:30 (Lanuza); Panticosa guided tour Wednesdays through 6 Sep. See Events & festivals.
  • NOT confirmed for 2026, treated as bonus-if-real, not planned around: EMTP Graus (~26–30 Aug), Era Hèsta de Vielha (~5–11 Sep — also mostly falls after the assumed window).
  • Outside the assumed window entirely: the Wed 26 Aug El Pueyo de Jaca stargazing session (before 29 Aug) and Festa Major de Durro (8–13 Sep, after 6 Sep) — neither is reachable under the 29 Aug–6 Sep assumption.
  • Each option's map shows real road-routed driving legs (via OSRM's free public routing API — no account/API key needed, unlike openrouteservice, so nothing to handle per .agents/skills/local-secrets-handling/SKILL.md), not straight lines — click a leg on the map for its exact distance/time. These are routing-engine estimates, not checked against live traffic; use each page's Google Maps directions link for traffic-aware timing. Real driving turned out meaningfully longer than straight-line distance suggested — e.g. Option A's Zaragoza↔Graus leg is 156 km / ~2h03 each way, not the ~117 km straight-line figure an earlier draft of these pages used.

See also: Sightseeing · Activities · Hiking · Events & festivals.