Josa i Tuixén

The thermometer outside the bakery in Tuixent reads 6 °C at nine on a late-May morning. Two elderly men in woollen caps are arguing about whether last night’s frost will have finished off the tomato plants. At 1 200 m, gardening here is a contact sport.

Josa i Tuixén sits on the first serious ridge of the Catalan Prepirineu, close enough to Barcelona for a weekend dash (190 km, 2 h 45 m on fast roads) yet high enough to feel like another country. Stone-and-slate hamlets drape across south-facing slopes, each cluster just big enough for a church, a fountain and a pack of dogs that chase the same post van every afternoon. The year-round population is barely 140; in August the place almost doubles and the village WhatsApp group lights up with warnings about parked cars blocking hay deliveries.

Stone, slate and silence

There are no ticketed monuments. Instead you get a masterclass in how Pyrenean villages kept the weather out: thick walls, tiny windows, roofs weighed down with extra slabs to stop the winter wind peeling them off. Walk the lanes of Josa de Cadí at dawn and the only sounds are the clank of a distant cowbell and the buzz of a tractor that started its working life when Spain still used pesetas. The Romanesque church of Sant Pere has been patched so often that half the stones mismatch; inside, the font is clearly repurposed from an earlier building, its carvings worn smooth by centuries of snow-melt water.

Tuixén, three minutes up the road by car or fifteen on foot, hides a more recent oddity: the former house of the trementinaires, women who trekked through the mountains selling turpentine balsam and herbal remedies. The little museum opens on request (€3, cash only) and still smells faintly of rosemary and distilled resin. Ask nicely and the caretaker will demonstrate how a sprig of St John’s wort, a bottle of mountain firewater and a lot of conviction once passed for rural A&E.

Trails that bite back

The hiking menu is short on gimmicks, long on gradient. A 5 km loop links the three main hamlets—Josa, Tuixén and Abarset—gaining and losing 250 m as it switches between oak woods and hay meadows. Markers are new, but mobile reception is patchy; download the free leaflet at turismejosaituixen.com/en/camins before you leave the bar. Cloud can drop in minutes: even confident navigators have spent an hour walking in circles above Abarset looking for the stone hut that was “just here last time”.

Keener boots can continue east to the coll de la Creu de Ferro (1 850 m), then scramble up to the Tossa Pelada, a rounded summit that gives views clear across the Cerdanya plain. Allow five hours return and carry water; the only spring on the ridge runs dry most summers. In winter the same route becomes a snow-shoe trail starting literally from the road; locals will lend aluminium racquets for €10 a day if you ask at Cal Cofa the night before.

When the snow flies

Downhill skiers expecting Alpine pizzazz will be disappointed. The nearest lift served area is Port del Comte, 20 km of hair-pin road away, small, sunny and rarely crowded even at Christmas. What Josa i Tuixén does offer is Nordic quiet: the Tuixent-La Vansa circuit has 45 km of groomed track, classic and skate, winding through pine and farmland. A day pass is €15 and you can swap between trails at three different car parks, so you are never more than 4 km from the van and a thermos.

Come February, the village’s biggest social event is the esquí de fons sardanya—a fancy way of saying “cross-country race followed by stew and a brass band”. Competitors range from serious club skiers doing 30 km in lycra to toddlers on plastic skis being dragged by grandparents. Everyone finishes in the football-field-cum-car-park; prizes are a round of local cheese and the right to choose next year’s playlist.

Things that actually get eaten

Restaurant choice is limited to two, both open only at weekends outside July and August. Cal Cofa in Tuixent serves a three-course set menú for €18; expect trumfos (potato, cabbage and pork-fat stew), grilled trout from the Segre, and a wedge of goat cheese that tastes faintly of thyme. Vegetarians need to warn them 24 hours ahead or they will get an omelette and a sympathetic shrug. The other option is Bar Esquí in Josa, essentially a front room with a espresso machine and a fridge full of Estrella; they knock out sandwiches bigger than your hand and will fill a flask of coffee for walkers who ask nicely.

Shops? One grocery, opens 09:00-13:00, stocks UHT milk, tinned tuna and the kind of rubbery baguette that doubles as a hiking weapon. If you need fresh coriander, gluten-free pasta or oat milk, do the supermarket run in Seu d’Urgell before you head uphill.

Beds, bills and being British

Accommodation splits between half-board rural hotels and self-catering flats carved out of haylofts. Cal Cofa has six rooms, thick duvets and a breakfast table groaning with homemade jam; doubles from €70. A handful of owners list on Airbnb, but signal is so weak you may not get the booking confirmation until you drive back into range. Mobile payments sometimes fail; the village bars share one card reader and it has an unpredictable relationship with British chip-and-pin. Bring cash.

Even in high summer nights drop below 12 °C—pack a fleece and a rain shell whatever the forecast says. The Met Office equivalent is Meteoblue; check the evening before any hike because summer thunderstorms build fast over the Cadí wall and the yellow-alert texts are easy to miss if your phone is still connected to a UK network.

The quiet hours

Entertainment is DIY. The single public bar closes at 23:00 sharp; the landlord flips the chairs while you are still sipping. Bring a pack of cards, download a podcast in the city, or do what the villagers do: sit outside, listen to owls and argue about whether wolves have come back yet. Light pollution is negligible—on moonless nights the Milky Way stretches directly above the church roof, so bright you catch it reflected in car windscreens.

Leave early on departure day; the sun has to climb over a 2 000 m ridge and the valley stays in shadow until well after eight. Frost on the slate roofs glitters like broken glass and the bakery smell drifts downhill, mixed with woodsmoke and something unmistakably rural. For a moment the place feels almost cosmopolitan—until you remember that the bread queue is the morning rush hour, and tomorrow it will start all over again, six degrees and still nobody in a hurry.