Spanish Holiday 2007
(Nov 6th-15th)
Having travelled by train and plane the party of 25 arrived at the friendly Hotel Estrell in the hill village of Rupit on the afternoon of the 6th.
Rupit is 845m above sea level and, as one would expect in November, the nights were chilly and frosty. Thus we were wisely clothed for the start of walks.
but soon warmed up in what turned out to be 10 days of nigh perfect walking weather.
This typical view looking back at Rupit was taken on the first day.
The scenery on the whole holiday was first class but none of it was exceeded by that of the first day.
Our leader (Burt Palmen) was obviously anxious that we should not miss a bit of it.
and organised a coffee stop,
so we could drink it in. It was just as well that the view made up for the trial of crossing this wobbly bridge.
that was the awful start for an awful lot of our walks.
There is much exposed rock in this area and this is a picture of the pinnacle after which Rupit is reputably named.
The summer rainfall had been low, exposing the limestone at the head of a normally mighty waterfall.
This is typical limestone country with impressive cliffs and hills.
Rupit is a beautiful village both as seen approaching from one of our walks.
and at close quarters
.
It can be seen that Rupit is built on the bare rock although some parts look like Dickensian London; presumably retained for the tourist trade.
Rupit has largely ceased to be a working town and now gets most of its income from tourism which is helped by its proximity to Barcelona. Although it was the end of the tourist season, we benefited from the number of restaurants that this tourism has generated.
Around Rupit we experienced the autumn colours that we would find in greater abundance later at Olot.
It was whilst walking in the woods that Eugene’s party acquired an extra member who luckily reappeared after disappearing for worryingly long intervals.
People also disappeared. Sue and David managed to absent themselves from the group photograph.
Olot is a full-blown town with more noise, dust and streets lined with plane trees that provided carpets of percussive leaves.
We decided that we would celebrate this contrast by having lunch on our first walk in amongst a dump of rocks in the otherwise empty car park of a factory.
There was a large food market in Olot where you could buy netted snails. 
Luckily Rita decided on oranges!
Here we are walking above Olot.
The volcano we climbed may have been extinct but we still found that getting to the top was hot work.
We went on to walk through a famous wood which consisted almost completely of autumnal beech trees and which stretched for miles.
On the last day in Olot, Eugene’s short walks party perversely walked longer than the long walks party.
It was all too much for John, who enjoyed a nap, well deserved after all his efforts in organising the holiday.
Many of the party took advantage of the holiday to spend a few days in Barcelona which is one of Europe’s outstanding cities. Barcelona is made unique by the designs of the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi whose work characterises the city with both highly decorated art nouveau dwelling houses.
and the massive cathedral of Sagrada Familia,
which staggers on in a state of perpetual construction eighty two years after Gaudi’s death.
Finally, we had an excellent and well balanced holiday with the well deserved blessing of lovely weather. Our thanks to John and Sybil.