Got up earlyish and walked across the road into the beautiful medieval village of Santa Pau. It looked nothing from the outside – just tall stone house walls, but once inside it was lovely. A bit deserted this morning, but you can imagine the arcaded Plaça Major buzzing in the summertime.
A quick stop at Lidl in Olot next and then onwards and upwards towards Ripoll. There were two roads on the map, but the one chosen by our in-house sat nav thing managed to take us up and over the Col de everything! 🙄
Through Ribes de Freser – we’ve had a lot of bottled water from here in the past. Then, finally we parked at Queralbs, ready to get the rack railway (Cremallera) up to Nuria.
Just a twenty minute journey through the gorges, we both felt like the Rough Guide had bigged it up a bit too much, as it was mainly tunnel! We arrived at a winter wonderland with a beautiful lake and a huge hotel complex but not much more. Our return ticket was four hours later and at this point we couldn’t see any walking options, other than back down the gorge, which we’d been told was very steep – having seen it, there’s no way on earth I could have done it!
After walking up to a couple of viewpoints, we eventually found a snowshoe trail. Another use for our Padel racquets maybe? We were ok in boots and crampon things as long as we stuck to the path.
Had coffee and hot chocolate when we got back to the cafe but had to mix them together as Guy’s hot chocolate was literally just melted chocolate we think!
Got an earlier train back down, both exhausted from what felt like a small walk in the snow! ⛄️
