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about La Pobla de Lillet
Tourist town with Gaudí’s Artigas Gardens and the Cement Train
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The first clue that La Pobla de Lillet is higher than most day-trip destinations from Barcelona is the temperature on the platform at La Molina station: even in late April it can be six degrees cooler than the city you left two hours earlier. At 840 m the air thins and sharpens; the Llobregat, still a stream rather than the sluggish river that reaches the sea, rattles under a stone bridge built wide enough for ox-carts, not coaches. Coaches rarely come here anyway—most visitors arrive on the retro-green carriages of the Tren del Ciment, a 3.5 km heritage line that trundles downhill from the old cement works, and realise only when they step off that the village itself is worth the detour.
Smokestacks turned showpieces
The Asland Cement Museum squats halfway up a pine-covered slope ten minutes’ walk from the centre. You’ll spot the three brick chimneys long before you reach the gate; what you won’t expect is the Modernista office block tucked between them, all wrought-iron balconies and ochre brickwork that would look at home on Passeig de Gràcia. Inside, the exhibition is refreshingly blunt: photographs of black-faced quarrymen, sacks labelled “Colònia Asland”, and a tally of the 1932 strike that shut the kilns for forty-two days. Entry is €8, last admission 17:00, and the audio guide (English available) lasts exactly as long as it takes for the smell of burnt lime to work its way into your clothes.
Gaudí’s intervention came before the strikes. In 1905 the factory’s owner asked the architect to landscape the gardens of his summer residence beside the river. The result, the Artigas Gardens, is ten minutes further downhill by footpath—or thirty if you stop to watch dippers hopping across the water. Moss-coated staircases twist between basalt boulders; a viaduct of stacked stone carries you over a waterfall that feels privately yours because coach parties are forbidden to park here. Tickets are tied to timed slots (€7, buy at the museum or online) and numbers are capped at 60 an hour, so midday crowds are impossible even in August.
A town that never quite gentrified
Walk back into the village and the contrast is immediate. There are no souvenir arcades, no gelato chains, only a single cash machine (Cajamar, main street, occasionally rejects Monzo cards) and two bakeries that shut at 13:00. Stone houses are roofed with slabs of local slate instead of the terracotta you expect further south; wooden balconies, painted ox-blood red, give the narrow lanes a Pyrenean accent rather than a Catalan one. The parish church of Santa Maria squats on a rock above the river; its Romanesque apse survived nineteenth-century rebuilding, but the interior is plain, candle-smoked, and open only when the sacristan remembers to lift the latch.
Food is mountain-weight. Trinxat—cabbage and potato crushed together with pancetta—arrives at Restaurant Cal Xico in a cast-iron pan sizzling with fat. A portion feeds two hungry walkers for €12; order it with a bottle of the house red (Berguedà merlot, €14) and you’ll still have change from thirty. If that sounds too hearty, the river trout at Hotel La Cabana comes simply grilled with toasted almonds, the Catalan answer to brown-butter sole. Dessert is almost always mató, a fresh cheese drizzled with local honey; think of it as a creamier, less tangy ricotta.
Trails that start at the doorstep
La Pobla’s tourist office, wedged between the pharmacy and the bridge, hands out free topo-guides for nine way-marked walks. The easiest, the 5 km Pedraforca viewpoint loop, gains only 220 m and delivers a perfectly framed postcard of that double-peaked mountain without the crowds that clog the track from Saldes. Harder options thread along old coal waggonways: the 12 km return to the Santuari de Falgars passes through beech forest so dense that mobile reception drops out for an hour—download the GPX before you set off. Summer temperatures stay in the mid-twenties, but afternoon storms build over the range; set off early and carry a light waterproof even in July.
Mountain-bikers can borrow an e-bike from the hostel on Plaça Major (€30 half-day). The old miner’s path to Castellar de n’Hug is 14 km of packed grit with 400 m of climb—manageable on battery power, calf-busting without. You’ll share the trail with the occasional shepherd and his dogs; ring the bell early and they step aside without fuss.
Winter, and the place empties
Snow arrives sooner here than on the coast. By mid-December the Tren del Ciment switches to weekend-only service, and the last departure back uphill is 15:30—miss it and you face a €35 taxi ride from the valley. The upside is bargain accommodation: doubles at Hotel Els Roures drop to €55 including breakfast, and you can drive to La Molina ski station in 35 minutes. Lift passes are cheaper than the big Pyrenean resorts (€42 a day mid-week), but queues still form at the bottom gondola after 09:30, so set the alarm.
Sunday lunchtime shutdown is absolute. Kitchens close by 16:00, supermarkets by 14:00, and the village’s single taxi heads off-duty unless booked the night before. Self-caters should stock up on Saturday evening; the butcher on Carrer Major will vacuum-pack sausages if you ask, and the bakery will freeze a loaf overnight.
Getting here, and away
No direct public transport links the village with Barcelona. The least painful route is the R3 train to La Molina (2 h 10 min, €12.60 with the targeta pink), then the 09:30 shuttle bus that meets the Tren del Ciment— but the bus runs only when the tourist train is operating, roughly April to early November. Outside those months you’ll need a car; the C-16 is a fast dual-carriageway until Guardiola de Berguedà, after which the final 12 km wind beside the river. Fill the tank at Berga; the village garage closes at lunchtime and fuel is 8 c cheaper per litre in town anyway.
Leave before dusk if you’re driving back to Girona airport the same day. The C-16 tunnels are unlit, and French lorries heading for Barcelona treat the inside lane as their personal slow lane. Better to stay the night, listen to the river instead of traffic, and discover that Catalonia can still do silence—no cicadas, no club beats, just the clatter of slate roofs cooling after sunset.
