Hiking Montserrat

Yesterday, accompanied by my Aussie sherpa, Peter (who kindly carried my bag for me the whole way) :) , was a full day of hiking in the region of Montserrat. These small mountains, located North of Barcelona, but just before the Pyrenees, are well known for their hiking trails, and the monestary which is located within the steep cliffs. At 9:30am we caught the train from Barcelona at Placa Espanya and took the 1 hour trip to Montserrat-Aeri. From this station we could have taken the teleferic/gondola up to the monestary,... but because we didn't really want to pay for it, and wanted to do more hiking, we booked it straight up the well marked trails reaching the monestary in about 1 hour. These mountains are quite steep which made the climb very aerobic, and it didn't take us long to work up a serious sweat despite the lack of sunshine and the cooler, cloudy weather.

At the monestary we took a break, had some food, and went into the main cathedral church to look around. We found ourselves cooling off very quickly, so it didn't take us long to decide to move on.

After a brief study of a trail map posted in the monestary area, we picked a path that we thought might lead in the direction of one of the mountains we'd seen, and set off. Destination: Sant Jeromi. This hike took about another 1 hour or so to do, and while we never reached the mountain peak that we'd originally set out for (it wasn't actually Sant Jeromi), we were not disappointed with where we ended up. Strangely enough we were between the clouds; a layer each above and below us,... The views were very good with the clouds surrounding the peaks further along the range; And we took care not to slip as the sharp drop offs to completely vertical cliffs seemed to be everywhere, and we were quite high up,...

The way down took us only half the time, but my knees really paid the price for our quick decent. A fantastic day of hiking, despite the less than perfect weather. I'm really glad to have seen this part of Catalunya, especially since the rest of my immediate family has already been here over the past couple of months.

Finally, I just have to include one last thing: On Saturday I went and saw Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth,.... what an inspirational man,... how different would things be today if he had been president?

Please check out his website: www.climatecrisis.net and try to see his film if you get a chance,... for all of you who took CHEM347 (Enviro. Chem) with me in 4th year, you will already know a lot about what he's talking about :)