Plank Road: The Garrotxa

We got going fairly early today as we had to drive about 1.5 hours to an area known as La Garrotxa to the northwest of us. The area is unique in that it is a landscape of extinct volcanoes. But we were more interested in mountains and gaining some elevation, so we took an arduous walk instead. We hope to get back to this area so we can take a walk through the volcanic landscape.

We drove through the town of Olot and out into the valley, the land is very beautiful in this area. Of course, I had to select a walk with one of the highest elevation gains in the hiking guidebook. The ascent was quite steep on a rough and rocky path through somewhat monotonous mixed forest of maple, oak, hazel, chestnut, beech, (the occasional holly tree) and boxwood.

There is a huge cliff with a cave which is gated. A statue of ‘the mother of god of the small saucepans,’ seriously, is in this cave behind the gates. When we finally got to the top, we emerged from the trees into sheep and cattle pastureland. The chapel of Santa Magdalena sits in the pasture in a stupendous position overlooking the mountains and the valley below. We then walked up to the top of Puig Corneli for even better views of the Pyrenees and the valleys all around.

We then headed for Salt de Sallent, the guidebook promised it would be an immense waterfall. When we reached a view of the sheer cliff and the waterfall we were granted a view of a trickle spilling down the cliff face. I guess there is not much water flow at this time of year. We then carried on to the source of the water fall, the Riera de Sallent, crossed it and then headed down.

There was another route down a medieval paved trail known as the Cami dels Matxos or Mules’ Trail but we would have had to backtrack so we opted to go down the Escales de Sallent.

The trail we selected was brutally steep, there are a few places where there are ropes attached to aid in getting down some rock faces. Some rocks also had footholds made of rebar so that we would not face plant straight down the trail. It was pretty tough going, as we had to slow down and be careful, it was that steep. Without our hiking poles we would have been doomed. It has been many years since we hiked down a trail that steep, our quad muscles were getting a bit fatigued.

We finally finished the sharp descent and got on a wider, more gentler trail close to the end. When we got back to Olot, we stopped in to get some groceries, loading up on whatever cava is on sale, cava is always on sale somewhere on a buy two and get one at half price dealio.

The walk covered 10 km and took us about 4.5 hours, by the time we got back to Palafrugell it was dark. Tomorrow we will be opting for a visit of some archaeological ruins to give our hammered leg muscles a break.

Lent-lilies (possibly)