Walks and other things

It's probably fair to say that the prettiest villages in Catalonia can be found around La Bisbal d'Emporda. La Bisbal is the 'capital' of Baix Emporda and seat of the bishops of Emporda. In the Middle Ages, this area was fertile and rich in farms and being inland was less open to attack from the sea by the pirate raiding parties.

The villages however kept their basic defensive structure of a continuous terrace of houses acting as a defensive wall that encloses in a central town or village square. However this means if you want to see the real ancient heart of the village you have to get out of the car - modern roads skirt the villages leaving the gems of gold-coloured stone houses and cloisters hidden inside, out of view from the road.

Monells is exactly one of these types of town. The main road passes through past an unprepossessing church and a tourist office for the Gavarres. Driving through it doesn't look anything special. But if you get out of the car and cross the river into the centre of the old village all of a sudden you are met by restaurant tables spilling across a cobbled town square with alcoves and arches providing shade from the sun.

Our walk (c10km) starts in Monells and follows the river out of town towards the Gavarres. To begin with the walk is relatively flat past open farm countryside with old Masia farm house and patches of woods. The walk is pleasant if not spectacular. In the woods the main drive-able path stops and the climb up starts in more earnest. The path is broad but stoney, so good shoes are advised. As you climb the views across the plain of the river Ter come into view. On a clear day Roses and the Pyrenees are visible. The vegetation changes from broad woods to something more sparse as the Alzinas thin out. Towards the top the path switches from one side of the ridge to another giving you views in all directions. Mont-Negre at the top can be reached by car from Quart, but as one of the girls wasn't feeling well, unusually for our walks we came straight back down the way we had come.

Neighbouring walks: Cruilles, Monells and Sant Sadurni de l'Heura - La Bisbal, Vulpellac, Castell d'Emporda, Fonteta - St Pol de Bisbal and Santa Lucia - Corça, Casavells, Matajudaica - Celra, Juia and the Castle of Palagret - Madremanya and Millars - Monells spring walk in the woods

Fornells and Aiguablava are small coastal locations in the municipality of Begur heading out towards Tamariu.

Aiguablava, where we're starting, is a small sandy beach under a Parador (a particular type of historic Spanish hotel) and is an archetypical sandy bay beach with turquoise sea under rocky cliffs, and is the main beach used on the adverts for Begur and its blue Mediterranean waters.

At the other end of this walk is the village or hamlet of Fornells (not to be confused with the village of the same name just outside Girona) is right on the coast and almost tumbles into the sea with a small pretty harbour cut into the rocks and two older Costa Brava hotels.

This is a walk we do regularly out of season, taking in one of the luxurious hidden corners of the Costa Brava past a variety of large houses and villas that seem to nestle into the sides of the hill above the sea between Fornells and Aiguablava.

If it was summer, Aiguablava's car park and small exquisite beach would be  full, but in December, when we are walking, it is empty, with practically no-one around.

This is one of the joys of the Costa Brava. Once the holiday season is over you pretty much have the place to yourself with the most beautiful spots shimmering in the winter sun, empty of anything but sand, sea and scenery.

The walking route we are taking follows the GR92 coast road (marked with red and white stripes on the paths). We tried the walk last spring (2012) only to find a rock fall had closed the path above the Aguablava end. This winter the path has been replaced with a short bridge over the gap.

So we start at the Aiguablava car park. The actual path, like many others here, might not be found on Google Maps - some times Google misses connections so it's not so good for walking off the beaten track, however, the route and GR92 is marked on walking maps and when walking the GR92 is marked by red and white flashes. The maps we normally use to check out routes are the Emporda Costa Brava 1:30,000 series, but even on these maps you'll find routes that aren't completely marked.

From Aiguablava (blue water) we follow the beach to the left and up steps over the cliffs to the next bay, full of large pebbles and rocks in complete contrast to Aiguablava. Being winter and so a bit wetter here, a small stream tumbles through the pebbles down to the sea and a small pile of whitened driftwood has washed to the back of the cove.

From the bay, the path then goes under a covered walk way beneath a luxury villa up a tunnel of stairs before emerging higher up just outside fields and an olive grove.

The path is larger and turns down into a pocket of terraced fishermen's cottages of Fornells so closely packed it feels like you're walking in people's yards. The red and white stripes of the GR92 are a reassurance you're on a genuine path.

Below the cottages, the path reaches a tiny little bay with barely enough sand for a sandpit and traces the rocks under the village before turning more cottages and up to the harbour and hotel above.

If you keep walking around the harbour you can continue across the rocks to another narrow cove where the rocks are in a chessboard of dark and light.

You then run into a natural looking 'infinity' pool (Es Cau) that uses the natural rocks by the sea with hidden wall to give the contrast of the still pool water with the sea beyond (it's a private pool).

Finally head up to the road and back out past the pristine gardens of the larger houses here. The final bit of the walk runs along the main road. Not so pleasant but not busy at this time of year.

Update 1: If you're walking this in reverse - Fornells to Aiguablava, someone has removed the signposts just below the orange houses as you leave Fornells. The path runs up the stairs and through what looks like the yard of the house.

Update 2 (2022): The path up from the 'sandpit' beach mentioned in Update 1 has been amended so there is now a set of stairs leaving the beach, so you don't have to go through the yard of the house (which is now fenced off) and provides some pretty views back across the beach.

Neighbouring walks: Sa Tuna, Cap de Begur, Begur - Palafrugell, Tamariu, Begur residential and Esclanya - Far de Sant Sebastia (Llafranc) to Tamariu - Begur, Ses Negres and Sa Riera

Swimming: Swimming at the beach at Aiguablava

Events: Begur - Festa d'Indians

The Clots de Sant Julia are a collection of spectacularly coloured small-scale pre-Roman quarries located just outside Vulpellac close to La Bisbal d'Emporda (a clot is a hole in Catalan). We'd seen it marked on a map without being able to find very much information as to what to expect, so to make a walk of it we parked at Sant Susanna de Peralt and walked out.

The walk (7.5km) is pretty flat past open fields with the Gavarres in the background and the castle and outside of the historic village of Peretallada to our north as we walked past a number of very large masia estates. To get to the Clots, the path turns up into a wood and initially the only visible sign that you've arrived is a board describing the Clots with no clear direction of where to go or quite what to look for. So we headed into the woods along some narrow paths. To the left we saw the first quarry pit - nothing much to look at. Then suddenly you turn down into a second pit at this great wall of bright yellow sandstone almost jumps out from the trees. The sandstone is soft enough to rub away with your fingers and so it has wear marks where previous visitors, and probably the original quarry makers had come for the colour and quality of the sand. The site is not too large and well hidden within the tree cover. Someone had laid sticks to mark off the edges of the pits so you wouldn't get too close, but most of the pits are 3-4 metres deep so nothing too steep or dangerous.

On leaving the Clots we followed the GR92 - the great Catalan coastal path (even though we're several mile inland) to Canapost - a golden stone village and from there to Peretallada with moat, bridge, castle, coves and myriad of restaurants in amongst the stone houses and cobbled streets. It's one of the most famous Catalan historic villages - though perhaps not that well known by foreign visitors.

Neighbouring walks: La Bisbal, Vulpellac, Castell d'Emporda, Fonteta - Canapost, Poblet Iberic and Ullastret - Palau-sator and Peratallada - Santa Susanna de Peralta and Sant Climent de Peralta - Llofriu, St Llop and Torrent - Mont-ras to Fitor and on to Fonteta and Vulpellac - Canapost to the medieval fair at Peratallada

Pessebres are nativity scenes that, in Catalonia at least, become very elaborate and large displays often taking in some aspects of local life. The village of Mont-ras just outside Palafrugell organises a competition of Pessebres each year with around 15-20 nativity scenes designed and made by local people, on display.

Pessebres aren't the only Christmas nativity scene. Several villages also have living nativity scenes on certain evenings close to Christmas with actors playing the part of Mary and Joseph.

Christmas is also celebrated somewhat differently from Northern Europe. The traditional Catalan christmas dinner is usually a vast assortment of fish eaten and a special selection of pasta de navidad cooked in caldo (stock). It can feel strange to see supermarkets advertising shellfish for Christmas dinner, and turkeys can be extremely difficult to find as a traditional English turkey dinner is definitely not on the Catalan menu.

Having said that, some aspects are creeping in. Traditionally Catalans do not have Christmas trees (the northern Spruce pine is not a native tree here), instead they have a caga-tio. That is a little log with a red barretina cap (the traditional catalan cap). The tio is covered by a blanket and the children hit the log with a stick and it 'poohs' (literally the meaning of caga) sweets for the children. It's not the only thing poohing at Christmas. In the traditional nativity scene there is normally a small figurine squatting with its trousers around it's ankles - usually based on some current famous person or celebrity.