As I was running out of easily accessible towns for my weekend day trips, I started looking further afield. I found a couple of interesting small villages north of Barcelona: Rupit and Besalú. To get there required renting a car. Greengo stayed at home.
Julie, our friend Vero and I started off early in the morning. Our first stop was the small town of Vic, that lays on the way to Rupit. It was nice, but not a show stopper. Vic’s main square was full of pro-independence banners as it is considered as “a hotbed of secessionist sentiment”. We did leave with some traditional sausages that come from there.
From there we drove deeper into the mountains to visit the tiny village of Rupit. It was quite charming albeit a bit grey, because of the stone used to built the houses and it being overcast. We went to the Sallent Waterfall nearby but due to the lack of recent rain, it was just a little stream of water running off a eighty-meter cliff. Nonetheless, the views around it were spectacular.
To get to Besalú we had to twist and turn on a mountainous road for around an hour. Besalú is a small town rich in history, dating back several centuries. We wandered through its streets, bought local traditional sweets, snapped quite a few photos, all the while skillfully avoiding a large group of elderly French tourists.
Alas, in line with Murphy’s law, the weather was perfect throughout our working week, but not when it would be most appreciated – on our day off. At least it wasn’t raining.
After a few day trips, I can say I am getting to know Catalunya more intimately. There’s still a couple of trips in my back pocket.
This period in numbers:
192 km – distance cycled
822 m – Rupit’s height above seal level
894 – year Besalú was converted to a county with its own dynasty
-24 °C – record cold temperature in Vic, during one of its winters