Catalonian Cobbles

 We walked fast down the stairs, even though I would have liked to do another climb, because we wanted to see the museum, which happily was open to 6:30.  It had an interesting collection, lots of artists from Barcelona,  a nice El Greco, a Spanish landscape artist I liked a lot, a great Rauolt, Egyptian statues, Barcelona sculptors, and other unexpected treasures.



Salgada Familia

Montserrat…it was foggy this morning, but no rain, we did our usual breakfast routine, a few walnuts, a piece of cheese cake from the local farmers, hot chocolate.  We drove the beautiful road, stopping to take pictures along the way, we always stop at the same spot…it is a narrow one lane road, but no one is ever on it.  But it was

Saturday, and the parking lot was packed, with buses and tourists.  We parked, put our packs on, and started the walk to the stairs.  It was a beautiful clear day, I could see it was going to be one of our best days.  We had packed a lunch of avocados, hardboiled eggs, bread and a few apples. We started up the stairs, I had lots of energy was very glad it was not raining. They rang the bells, which echoed off the rocks.  We got to the top of the hike in record time, found the climb we were looking for, but it was still in the shade, and the rock was cold, so we moved over to the next pinnacle, up a steep gully, and found our climb.  Jakob decided to make a sandwich, but dropped the avocado, after it was peeled and it rolled down the hill. But he retrieved it and made a funny sandwich.   It was a beautiful long cobbly climb, run out to the first bolt, but with bolts all the way, the first pitch, sometimes chilly, but in the sun it was about perfect. Very cobbly conglomerate. I had to climb slowly to study the rocks.    I made a belay on a tree and brought Jakob up. We had chosen the more difficult of the two climbs, and continued up the 6a, which can mean a lot of different things at Monserrat, sometimes 10a sometimes much harder. The next pitch was memorably interesting, great climbing all the way to the top.   Every time I needed a hold, a big cobble appeared.   Jakob forgot to bring his shoes, thinking we could rappel, and we ended up doing a long meandering walk back to the trail. Along the way we saw some, wild goats and very interesting flowers, bees and a small beetle.  The mountain is covered in rosemary.  

 On the rainy day, it rained so much I thought things would never drive out.  We changed our plans and drove to Barcelona.

The restaurant that is never open, like most restaurants in the area,  they are more like the idea of a restaurant. Even the tourist office is never open, just to get people used to the idea of how things work here.  Except the monastery, seems to always be open, with farmers selling cheese and honey.