Tag Archives: Igualada

A walk around the clock

This day began with an excellent breakfast in the foyer of my guest house in Santes Creus where the innkeeper had placed an espresso machine, sandwiches, yogurt, and orange juice. I went on my way at seven in the morning and would not come to rest again until eleven in the evening due to a decision to change the route radically once more. The explanation to that is that I met with the GR-7 once more but soon decided to move away from it again and take an alternative route. The GR-7 in that area mainly follows dirt tracks lined with pine trees that makes it impossible to see anything at all of the surroundings and it was also raining quite heavily and that made the track very slippery and clay stuck to the boots making it impossible to take more than a few steps until it had to be cleaned off. Given those circumstances I thought that I would be better off walking in a nearby tarmac road. But after having passed Bellprat, the third little village with nothing more to offer than chlorinated water from the public water fountain I changed direction and started to walk straight towards Igualada, the nearest city. A couple of kilometers down the road I made a hotel reservation at a hotel in the city using my iPhone. All the time from Tarifa to Andorra I was often grateful for the excellent coverage that my Yoigo “La del Uno” prepaid Internet subscription supplied even in the countryside and in the mountains. I arrived at around eleven in the evening to the hotel and to my surprise and joy the friendly clerk saw to it that I had a hot meal and a glass of wine after having taken a much longed-for shower.

God’s finger

A very pleasant day with this oddly shaped mountain, Montserrat, in focus. Montserrat means saw mountain in Catalan and when looking at the shape of the mountain it is obvious why. I went up into the heart of the mountain where monks during centuries have been constructing a complete city with a cathedral and all. Montserrat is a tourist magnet and there were plenty of people up there even if it was rather late in the afternoon. On my way down to the village Monistrol de Montserrat I passed by a nun’s convent and the nun on guard showed me the inside of the church that had a very modernistic touch. All the furnishing except for a sculpture showing the Madonna and the child had been crafted by the nuns themselves she said. And they certainly had made a beautiful and very professional job of it. She was quite talkative and I asked her if her order demanded that they took a vow of silence and she said it did, but five times a day they gathered in the church for praying and singing and then they took the chance to really exercise their vocal cords 🙂