The weather today looked a bit messy. Clear in the morning and then clouding over, then clearing again in the evening. Snow/rain only in the west of the country (Catalonia, that is). To be fair, I hadn’t looked at the synoptic charts, and in retospect, if I had done, I would have seen the big warm front passing through and dismissed the forecast.

With the wind increasing, I thought it would be a good idea to go for a walk and instead of using our passes to go skiing at Nuria, we decided to get a free ride in the mountain train and then walk back down. It’s a stiff walk with a 700m height difference, so a bit like walking down Snowdon via the Pyg path.

We had work to do this morning, but left the house in what seemed like a summer’s day. Blue, little cumulus popping off and warm. The satnav said we would only just make it to the train in Queralbs, so Geoff put his foot down and we got there with 8 minutes to spare. Nuria is only accessible by rack and pinion railway – no cars up there. There has been a religious building of some sort since the 6th century, but now there is a horrible grey concrete block there. Completely not in keeping with its surroundings and not in the local style at all. The sun had completely gone at this point with high cloud coming in, but it wasn’t clagged in. We had a quick coffee and then set off down the path. The first way marker said it was 2 hours 25 minutes to Queralbs, so we decided to amble. I had assumed that most of the snow on the path would either have melted or have been turned to slush by walkers over the weekend, but I was very wrong. What wasn’t snow had been trodden to ice and we were both glad I had brought my walking sticks. We took one each and needed them when slipping along the narrow icy paths with big drops next to us.

The snow line also went a lot lower than I thought, so we walked down very slowly. We had been walking about an hour when we spotted the next distance marker, which said Queralbs 2 hours 25 minutes. Ok… A good way along, we stopped for a picnic and realised that it was 16.20pm and the cloud was dropping down the mountain sides. Time to get a move on! The distance markers kept giving us ridiculous walking times, which seemed to randomly make our destination seem just round the corner or unreachably far away. Forty-five minutes from Queralbs it started spitting and we really started walking seriously. We got there to find most of the bars and restaurants closed but one open to serve us a well deserved beer after 4 hours of walking.

We got to the car and it was pissing down and continued to do so all the way to Castellfollit. Thanks for the heads up, Meteocat!

See photos of today.

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