There's an old Basque saying: "To know how to eat is to know enough." Pierre Oteiza, a Basque farmer and artisan producer in the verdant Vallée des Aldudes, 65km southeast of Biarritz, would appear to embody this philosophy. He smiled, and swept his hand over the fruits of his labour – this is all you need to know, he seemed to be saying – "Bon appétit."

The table in his farm shop was laden with platters of sliced saucisson and jambon, blood sausage and chorizo. There were terrines of pig's ear, tongue, and pots of pork pâté with baskets of freshly baked bread. The little bowl of cherries in vinegar and the plate of tomatoes with tiny gherkins seemed hopelessly outflanked.

It was one hell of a pigfest, and it was delicious – even the pig's ear. It was also merely the appetiser for the hearty lunch that followed. There was fall-off-the-bone lamb stew, a selection of local cheeses with quince jelly and a tooth-achingly good ewe's milk ice-cream spooned over frozen black cherry preserve. All this was helped down with a crisp white wine from the only vineyard in the region, a few kilometres away in Irouléguy.

We'd just returned from inspecting the source of much of this generous spread – the long-eared Basque pigs that Pierre has helped rescue from extinction (albeit to serve them up on a platter). Pierre was 22 when he took over his parents' 15-hectare farm here in Les Aldudes, a one-road village that lies in the foothills of the Pyrénées near the border with Spain. It was the late 1980s, and there were just 25 of these animals left – from 150,000 in the 1920s. "After the war they relied on intensive pork production. With the Pie Noire, or Basque pig, it takes 18 months before they are ready for slaughter. Nobody could afford to wait that long," he said.

But Pierre and a handful of local farmers banded together to prevent a part of Basque culture from dying out. Now one of 70 breeders in the valley, his pigs forage on acorns and chestnuts in enclosures on the mountainside, Pierre has 10 shops in France selling a range of Basque pork and cuisine – all of it produced within yards of where we were enjoying lunch. The sign outside his shop, next to the pens of newly born piglets, proudly proclaimed: "Renaissance d'une race".

It would be a fitting slogan for the Basque people. Mark Kurlansky wrote in The Basque History of the World: "The singular remarkable fact about the Basques is that they still exist … [They] are determined to lose nothing that is theirs, while still embracing the times."

I had come to this rugged corner of the French Basque country to fish. In the network of rivers that tumble down the narrow gorges and wide valleys of the Pyrénées Atlantiques, I was searching for adventure and for Basque trout – small, wild, and notoriously difficult to catch. I found both with the help of two excellent local guides. But what started out as a fishing trip ended up being more of a culinary and cultural adventure.

My guides led me into the untamed corners of the country. We scrambled down steep banks, beating a path through trees, bramble and undergrowth to gain access to the smooth aprons of water holding the fish. When the fish weren't there, we moved on. We walked along disused railway lines, past abandoned mines and derelict sheepfolds.

In the course of four days, we criss-crossed the rolling green countryside dotted with whitewashed houses with red shutters and roofs – the landscape reflecting the colours of the Basque flag. We drove up into the mountains to the Irati, the river that Ernest Hemingway fished on the Spanish side and described in his 1927 novel The Sun Also Rises. We were forced to stop for herds of blonde Pyrénées cattle and horses sauntering along the spectacular mountain roads. And we watched vultures wheeling overhead while we fished. We fished around trees and rocks on the Irati, yet only managed to catch a small salamander – on camera. We stopped for a picnic at a riverside campsite, taking advantage of the early summer sunshine and eating baguettes, sheep's cheese, pepper rillettes and chorizo. It ranks as one of my best fishing memories.

Yet I found myself getting more and more distracted by the food. At every turn was a farm sign offering up something local and tasty: sheep's cheese, goat's cheese, black cherry jam, fig jam, piperade, Basque gâteaux. And for those who have failed to bag a wild fish, there are no fewer than 12 small trout farms spread along the river Nive where you can cheat and buy yourself dinner. Apart from small supermarkets in the villages, nowhere did I see any signs of a convenience-food lifestyle.

I've read a little about Basque cuisine, mostly on the more developed Spanish side, but beyond Bayonne ham and chocolate I knew next to nothing about rural French Basque food. I was about to get a masterclass in the restaurant of the hotel in which I was staying. Hotel Arcé is a family-run affair in the preposterously pretty village of St Étienne de Baïgorry. It's been in the Arcé family for five generations, more than 140 years, and was first a small hotel called the Franco-Espagnol, which was a stopping place for travellers en route to Spain, sometimes pilgrims on the increasingly popular pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

The setting for the hotel is hard to beat. The rooms are elegantly spare and comfortable, and the dining room was converted from the old village pelota court (pelota is the popular ball game of the Basque country). But the food is exceptional. Traditional heavy rural dishes, such as stuffed rabbit, are served up by chef Pascal Arcé with a spring-light touch; coquilles St Jacques on a bed of leeks with a mushroom sauce melt in the mouth; and the ewe's milk yoghurt with honey – a staple – gets a fresh spin in a brandy snap accompanied by pencil-thin meringues and vanilla ice-cream. If I was making the pilgrimage from nearby St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compestela, I know where my first refuelling stop would be.

The restaurant has always had a reputation for fine food, and held a Michelin star for 50 years, according to Pascal's wife Christine. "Then no Michelin star for 30 years – but we had an inspector in last night, so … we hope."

All the food is sourced locally. "There is no need for me to go anywhere else," said Pascal. "I can find everything I need from small producers within a few miles. People here don't think of this as exceptional – it's how it has always been and should be."

On my final day, a Saturday, I was driving back along the road from St Étienne de Baïgorry to Les Aldudes to stock up on saucissons when I hit the first line of crawling traffic during my stay. I assumed that this was the weekend snag of living in such a beautiful place – daytrippers. Then I saw the trail of flattened cowpats down the road and remembered that Christine had mentioned it was the day of the annual transhumance, when all the Baïgorry farmers walk their blonde Pyrénées to Urepel, the next village on from Les Aldudes. There they pay their grazing fees, and the cattle are branded and taken to the summer pastures in the Erro valley in the Spanish Basque country. The transhumance is an ancient tradition, but this local arrangement has only been in place since 1858.

I parked up just outside Urepel, after eventually negotiating the chicanes of cattle en route. The village was already filling up with folk from the valley who had come to watch the procession, and stands had been erected above a pen so that they could watch the cows being branded. More than 150 years on, it's still a big day in the local calendar.

You need to know…

EasyJet (easyjet.com) flies from Gatwick to Biarritz; Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from Birmingham and Stansted to Biarritz

Hotel Arcé, 64430 St Étienne de Baïgorry (00 33 5 59 37 40 14; hotel-arce.com). Doubles from €125 per night

Pierre Oteiza, Route Urepel, Les Aldudes (00 33 5 59 37 56 11; pierreoteiza.com)

Fishing guides: Yvon Zill (basquecountry- fishing-guide.com); Benjamin Charron (pechesport-paysbasque.com)

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