The broad track winds gently down through a forest of cypress and pine, with hand-grenade-sized cones underfoot. There’s an occasional boot print to be seen, but no sign of boot-wearers, and indeed I haven’t glimpsed another human since setting off from Poblet Monastery, in the Priorat region, an hour’s train journey and short taxi ride west of Barcelona, Spain.
My destination is another monastery a few days’ walk away, and the wine country beyond that. But the Spain in between is mountainous and thinly populated – this is no well-trodden, Unesco World Heritage-listed pilgrimage route. Although there are established paths, perhaps once used by monks to inspect their demesne, others are now trodden only by foresters, hunters and those in search of the wild mushrooms that grow here in great variety.
Some tracks are too tiny to be mapped and numbered in federal or regional systems, although occasional marks on path-side rocks are reassuring. The very detailed written notes provided by self-guided walk specialists On Foot Holidays, and now slung around my neck in the transparent waterproof folder provided, are my main guide.
If the onward direction looks obvious, then it definitely isn’t the right way. And I now see there’s a faint thread of an additional path tumbling steeply downhill at an angle. The notes confirm this is indeed the right direction, as does a guilty look at downloaded maps in a GPS app on my phone just to make sure that I’m not about to get lost, and that I’m not lost already.
The trees confuse the signal, and the dot indicating my location dances around the screen before finally settling down, and the onward route is indeed shown as a slight fork right. Like so much of the El Priorat walk, without detailed local knowledge it would never be discovered. And it looks as if no one has taken this path in months.
Self-guided walks look to be perhaps the ideal holiday for our diseased and temperamental times. Setting aside the well-known benefits of exercise, sunlight and fresh air even without a pandemic, self-guided tours can be kept to friends and family members, avoiding strangers of unknown hygiene habits.
And despite the extensive personalised itinerary provided, and local support just a text or call away, self-guided tours are typically cheaper than guided ones. Having to find your own way also adds a sense of adventure, with little bursts of gratification throughout the day when some promised marker or cairn is successfully reached.
Five minutes’ walk away there’s only birdsong, the wind in the leaves, and the trickle of streams. Sights passed include a charcoal burner’s mound and a ruined ice house, hinting at other original purposes for these paths.
Neolithic rock art in the form of grey shadows on pinkish cliff – a hunter, a bull, a goat – provides evidence of human presence much earlier still. A forestry administration building that’s a miniature masterpiece of Catalan art nouveau perches on a ridge with sweeping views. And that’s just the first day.
Family-run Mas de l’Arlequi, outside the town of Rojals, is typical of the well-chosen accommodation – a beautiful conversion of an 18th-century farmhouse with only a handful of rooms, giving its very few guests adequate space. Each day the bags make their own way to the next night’s lodgings, leaving the walker with only the day’s notes and a packed lunch to carry.
The third day on foot passes through thickets of wild thyme and rosemary, and brings an encounter with mushroom picker, a wicker basket over her arm.
I gesture at it. “Mucho?” “Si,” She smiles widely, and lifts a cloth to reveal a selection of plate-sized fungi with a sharp little knife nestling among them.
The route winds to an atmospheric ruined village on a cliff edge with swallows its only remaining inhabitants, and descends to pass beneath overhanging rock in the gorge below, which has been worn smooth by waters that are currently only a trickle.
Then, following a period in trackless forest during which the GPS becomes essential, there’s a half-hour, back-way-into-Mordor climb to a path cut into sheer cliff high above the valley below.
This leads to the citadel of Siurana, the last Moorish stronghold to fall to the Christian reconquista, in 1153, and an alfresco lunch outside a restaurant overlooked by ancient houses.
Other pleasures include a visit to the ruins of the 12th-century Carthusian monastery at Escaladei, and an earnest and entertaining wine-tasting at Clos Figueras in the hilltop village of Montsant, followed by an inventive meal there.The land here is stony and steep and yields correspondingly small, so the wines are drunk young and fresh, the minerality of the soil clear in a pleasant slaty-ness on the tongue.
“Two monasteries, two orders, two landscapes, two wine regions – I wanted to show walkers how two monastic orders are reflected in the landscape,” Joanna Thomas tells me over a drink on what is my last evening.
On Foot has specialised in self-guided walks since its founding in 2005. Company director Debbie Rigg says new walkers are less concerned about navigation than about whether they’ll have sufficient stamina. What happens if they have an accident? Where do they go for their meals? Does it matter about language issues?
Accommodation is all booked in advance, the local contact will make dinner or other reservations as requested, and her support is just a text or call away, 24 hours. There are often choices of easier or harder routes, and the option to skip some sections altogether, thumbing a lift with the taxi that moves the hiker’s luggage.
