One of the things that makes being injured a bit less annoying is that it gives you time to do some other things that normally get pushed out by climbing. One of these is hiking - I'd intended to do a bit of it on this trip, but up til now climbing and the associated faff had been taking up all our time. As it turns out I almost couldn't have picked a better place to do it if I'd tried!
The county of Pallars Jussa is situated in the Iberian Pre-Pyrenees. It's a beautiful landscape of Pre-Pyrenean mountain ranges split by deep, rocky valleys, with stunning views of the snow-capped Pyrenees themselves on a clear day. The county consists of two main sections either side of the town of Tremp: Serra de Montsec on the southern edge, and Vall Fosca (the Dark Valley) in the north. We've been based around Montsec so far because that's where Terradets is, but hopefully we'll get to explore north at some point too.
There's loads of well-signposted, waymarked footpaths round here - the map we picked up from the tourist info in Tremp describes over 50! We've only done three (routes numbered 2, 6 and 1 from the map, respectively), but they were all lovely.
Barranc del Bosc (8.7 km): This was a pleasant ridge walk that took a couple of hours one afternoon. It passes underneath the 500 m high rock face of Roca Regina, then climbs the hill beyond to gain a ridge with some lovely views. According to the sign board at the top, it's a good place to see eagles. Based on the pictures provided, I think I saw a short-toed eagle flying past. Or it may have just been a buzzard - but since we both forgot to take cameras on this walk you'll just have to take my word for it...
El Castell de Mur (8.8 km): This was another pleasant afternoon walk, with the added bonus that it went past not one, but TWO medieval castles! Starting from the small village of Guardia de Noguera, we climbed up the steep hillside to reach the first castle, Castell de Mur.
This was the bigger of the two, and has things to see inside and a little museum attached. Unfortunately, it was all closed when we got there - unsurprisingly since their opening hours appeared to be only Saturdays and Sundays, 11.30-13.00. There was a little interactive information screen outside though that provided information on many aspects of Catalunyan culture, history and gastronomy, including some traditional Catalan recipes. I was particularly intrigued by this one - a Catalan version of haggis, I think:
The walk continued gently along a ridge to the second castle, Castell de Guardia. This one was a lot smaller and more ruined, but you could go inside and climb up a ladder to the first floor. I got to do a royal wave from the window, so it was totally worth it:
We then headed back down to Guardia de Noguera and started enviously at what I assume is the local cider making setup:
Ermita de Sant Salvador and Portella Blanca: The final route was a longer one (I'm unsure of the exact distance but it took about 5 hours) that climbed all the way up to the ridge of the Montsec de Rubies and down the other side, via the Ermita de Sant Salvador del Bosc. This was reached by a route called the Camà de les 100 Corbes - I naively assumed this meant 100 steps (I'm sure I've done walks in the UK before that have been called 'the path of X steps') - I thought '100 steps will be easy enough, and an efficient way to gain height'. It turns out 'Corbes' actually means 'bends' - it actually translates as the path of 100 switchbacks! When a path's named after the number of switchbacks it has, you know you're in for a slog... I quickly lost count of the number of bends, but some helpful individual had marked the number left to go at regular intervals.
The Ermita itself wasn't particularly impressive, just a bricked up stone building - I'd have been pretty disappointed if it had been the only reason for walking up there. The views, on the other hand, were amazing!
After the Ermita, the route continued up to the ridge (via a few more switchbacks!), and then along this to the Portella Blanca. I had no idea what this was going to be - it turned out to be a big notch in the cliff on the south side of the ridge that allowed you to get down.
I was struck by the contrast in the vegetation on the north and south sides of the range. On the way up I'd been walking up rocky paths through deciduous woodland full of moss-covered trees, ivy, and little purple flowers. On the south side we were back to a typically mediterranean landscape - pine trees, spiky bushes and lots and lots of rosemary).
The route described by the map unhelpfully stopped at the Portella Blanca, possibly because the ridge of the Montsec de Rubies marks the edge of the county - the way down was therefore someone else's problem! The route joined the GR1 long distance footpath at this point though, so I followed that until I found a sign pointing back to Font de les Bagasses, where we'd left the van.
Long-distance walking potential:
The second walk we did (the one with the castles) coincided for a while with another route marked with a mysterious red '8' symbol. The mystery was revealed when we found a signboard at Castell de Mur. We'd come across El CamÃ, a relatively recent long distance footpath (parts of it are still under construction) with the ambitious aim of connecting together all sites of cultural, historical and ecological interest in the Catalan speaking regions. The Pallars Jussa contains a 160 km section of it. I had a look at the full route on their website later - it's somewhere between 4000 and 5000 km in total and forms a rough figure of eight (the reason for the '8' symbol). I was quite surprised just how far the Catalan speaking region extends - north to Perpignan and as far south as Alicante on the mainland, and over the sea to the Baleriac islands. The whole thing seems to have been put together by volunteers and funded by donations, so it's quite impressive. Definitely something I'd be interested in doing more of if I came back to this region - the 0.1% we've done so far was very nice!
The county of Pallars Jussa is situated in the Iberian Pre-Pyrenees. It's a beautiful landscape of Pre-Pyrenean mountain ranges split by deep, rocky valleys, with stunning views of the snow-capped Pyrenees themselves on a clear day. The county consists of two main sections either side of the town of Tremp: Serra de Montsec on the southern edge, and Vall Fosca (the Dark Valley) in the north. We've been based around Montsec so far because that's where Terradets is, but hopefully we'll get to explore north at some point too.
There's loads of well-signposted, waymarked footpaths round here - the map we picked up from the tourist info in Tremp describes over 50! We've only done three (routes numbered 2, 6 and 1 from the map, respectively), but they were all lovely.
Barranc del Bosc (8.7 km): This was a pleasant ridge walk that took a couple of hours one afternoon. It passes underneath the 500 m high rock face of Roca Regina, then climbs the hill beyond to gain a ridge with some lovely views. According to the sign board at the top, it's a good place to see eagles. Based on the pictures provided, I think I saw a short-toed eagle flying past. Or it may have just been a buzzard - but since we both forgot to take cameras on this walk you'll just have to take my word for it...
El Castell de Mur (8.8 km): This was another pleasant afternoon walk, with the added bonus that it went past not one, but TWO medieval castles! Starting from the small village of Guardia de Noguera, we climbed up the steep hillside to reach the first castle, Castell de Mur.
This was the bigger of the two, and has things to see inside and a little museum attached. Unfortunately, it was all closed when we got there - unsurprisingly since their opening hours appeared to be only Saturdays and Sundays, 11.30-13.00. There was a little interactive information screen outside though that provided information on many aspects of Catalunyan culture, history and gastronomy, including some traditional Catalan recipes. I was particularly intrigued by this one - a Catalan version of haggis, I think:
 |
| Intrigued to try this... |
The walk continued gently along a ridge to the second castle, Castell de Guardia. This one was a lot smaller and more ruined, but you could go inside and climb up a ladder to the first floor. I got to do a royal wave from the window, so it was totally worth it:
 |
| Royal wave... |
We then headed back down to Guardia de Noguera and started enviously at what I assume is the local cider making setup:
Ermita de Sant Salvador and Portella Blanca: The final route was a longer one (I'm unsure of the exact distance but it took about 5 hours) that climbed all the way up to the ridge of the Montsec de Rubies and down the other side, via the Ermita de Sant Salvador del Bosc. This was reached by a route called the Camà de les 100 Corbes - I naively assumed this meant 100 steps (I'm sure I've done walks in the UK before that have been called 'the path of X steps') - I thought '100 steps will be easy enough, and an efficient way to gain height'. It turns out 'Corbes' actually means 'bends' - it actually translates as the path of 100 switchbacks! When a path's named after the number of switchbacks it has, you know you're in for a slog... I quickly lost count of the number of bends, but some helpful individual had marked the number left to go at regular intervals.
There were also little stone shrines dotted along the path every so often, each with a picture of a different saint in it.
The Ermita itself wasn't particularly impressive, just a bricked up stone building - I'd have been pretty disappointed if it had been the only reason for walking up there. The views, on the other hand, were amazing!
After the Ermita, the route continued up to the ridge (via a few more switchbacks!), and then along this to the Portella Blanca. I had no idea what this was going to be - it turned out to be a big notch in the cliff on the south side of the ridge that allowed you to get down.
I was struck by the contrast in the vegetation on the north and south sides of the range. On the way up I'd been walking up rocky paths through deciduous woodland full of moss-covered trees, ivy, and little purple flowers. On the south side we were back to a typically mediterranean landscape - pine trees, spiky bushes and lots and lots of rosemary).
The route described by the map unhelpfully stopped at the Portella Blanca, possibly because the ridge of the Montsec de Rubies marks the edge of the county - the way down was therefore someone else's problem! The route joined the GR1 long distance footpath at this point though, so I followed that until I found a sign pointing back to Font de les Bagasses, where we'd left the van.
Long-distance walking potential:
The second walk we did (the one with the castles) coincided for a while with another route marked with a mysterious red '8' symbol. The mystery was revealed when we found a signboard at Castell de Mur. We'd come across El CamÃ, a relatively recent long distance footpath (parts of it are still under construction) with the ambitious aim of connecting together all sites of cultural, historical and ecological interest in the Catalan speaking regions. The Pallars Jussa contains a 160 km section of it. I had a look at the full route on their website later - it's somewhere between 4000 and 5000 km in total and forms a rough figure of eight (the reason for the '8' symbol). I was quite surprised just how far the Catalan speaking region extends - north to Perpignan and as far south as Alicante on the mainland, and over the sea to the Baleriac islands. The whole thing seems to have been put together by volunteers and funded by donations, so it's quite impressive. Definitely something I'd be interested in doing more of if I came back to this region - the 0.1% we've done so far was very nice!
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