Sagàs

The church bell strikes noon and nobody hurries. Not the farmer loading hay onto his tractor, not the woman locking up the bakery after the last loaf has gone, and certainly not the elderly men still nursing cortados at the bar. In Sagàs, 738 metres above sea-level at the southern lip of the Prepirineo, time is measured by tractor engines and bread trays, not timetables.

Most British travellers barrel straight past on the C-25, eyes fixed on the high peaks an hour north. That is their loss. Sagàs offers something the ski resorts have long since mislaid: a working Catalan parish where tourism is a welcome side-dish, never the main course. Stone farmhouses sit among wheat and sunflowers; the only soundtrack is the rattle of a combine harvester and, when the wind drops, the grunt of wild boar in the oak scrub.

Stone, Slate and Silence

The village nucleus is a five-minute shuffle across. Houses are built from honey-coloured granite hauled out of local quarries; roofs pitch steeply to shed winter snow that rarely settles for long. Look up and you will spot 17th-century lintels carved with sheaves of wheat or the original owner's initials, half-eroded by rain. Sagàs never had city walls, grand palaces or even a market square – prosperity here was always counted in hectares of fertile bottom-land, not marble.

The parish church of Sant Andreu anchors the single main street. Part Romanesque, part 19th-century patch-up, its bell-tower leans two degrees west after a lightning strike in 1930. Inside, the cool darkness smells of candle wax and damp stone; frescoes are peeling but you can still make out a medieval Virgin dressed in what looks suspiciously for Catalan taste – deep Tyrian purple. Mass is held only twice a week; if the door is locked, ask at the bar and someone’s cousin will fetch the key.

Wander beyond the last house and lanes fray into gravel tracks that dive between fields of alfalfa and lines of walnut trees. This is where the village lives up to its name – sagas, plural of saga, the old Catalan word for deep, wooded hollow. Holm oak and robinia cloak the hillsides; in late October the underfoot collage of copper leaves and chestnut shells could be rural Shropshire until you notice the terraces held together by dry-stone walls barely a foot thick, a technique the Moors left behind a thousand years ago.

Walking, Pedalling, Foraging

There are no ticket booths, no colour-coded arrows, just a rack of dog-eared maps at the bakery. Routes range from a forty-minute loop to the abandoned hamlet of Les Corts to a half-day haul over the Coll de Malrem to neighbouring la Quar. Footpaths follow the dry-stone irrigation channels – recs – that once fed the mills downstream. Boots are recommended after rain; the clay here clings like wet biscuit and turns every stone into a skating rink.

Mountain-bikers have the run of forest tracks once used by charcoal burners. A popular 18-kilometre circuit threads Sagàs with Gironella along the old railway bed; gradients are gentle, gradients are gentle, scenery is big-sky cereal-steppe rather than crag-top drama. Take spare inner tubes – thorns from the rosedal hedges have a talent for punctures.

Autumn brings locals out with wicker baskets hunting níscalos (golden chanterelles) and rovellons (saffron milk-caps). Mushrooming is taken as seriously as tax returns: trespass in someone’s secret bac and you will be escorted off by a polite but firm farmer. Visitors can join guided forays run by Els Casals restaurant on Saturday mornings; €30 includes a field breakfast of grilled bacon and mountain potatoes. Expect to hand over your haul – you will get it back at dinner, sautéed in parsley and garlic.

What You’ll Eat and Where You’ll Sleep

Els Casals is the only reason some Britons have heard of Sagàs. The Michelin-listed farmhouse restaurant sits five minutes outside the village down a track that reduces hire cars to first gear. Inside, beams are black with centuries of smoke and the menu changes daily depending on what siblings Jordi and Montse have shot, grown or traded. Starters might be a salad of their own lettuces with warm goat’s cheese so fresh it still carries the tang of barn hay. Mains swing from charcoal-grilled lamb – xai – whose crisp fat tastes of wild rosemary, to slow-braised wild boar scented with village red wine and cloves. Three courses €42, wine extra. Book before you leave the UK; weekend tables van months ahead.

If the rooms above the restaurant are full (only ten, all beams and underfloor heating), Cal Mateus runs a simpler B&B above the village bar. Expect squeaky parquet, Wi-Fi that flickers when the microwave goes on, and breakfast of strong coffee plus tomato-rub bread still warm from the baker’s tray opposite. Double €65 including tax – pay in cash unless you enjoy watching card machines hunt for signal.

Berga, fifteen minutes by car, offers a fallback: the functional but comfortable Hotel Berga Park with underground parking and a pool that saves arguments when travelling with teenagers.

When to Come, How to Get Here, What Can Go Wrong

Spring and early summer are glorious: green wheat ripples like the sea and daytime temperatures sit in the low twenties. July and August turn dusty and hot; the village empties as families head to the Costa Brava, leaving one bar open and a single baker on rota. Autumn brings mushroom colour – ochre, rust, chestnut – and cool nights ideal for log fires. Winter is quiet, occasionally snowy, and restaurants cut opening days to weekends only.

You need wheels. Girona airport (Ryanair from London-Stansted, Bristol, Manchester; 1 h 20 min) is 35 minutes away on the C-25 and BV-4244. The final ten kilometres narrow to single-track with passing places; meet a combine at harvest time and you will reverse fifty metres into a barley field. Barcelona is an hour-forty on faster motorways but tolls add €14 each way. There is no petrol station in Sagàs – fill up in Girona or Vic before you leave the main road.

Public transport is fiction. Two school buses run to Berga on weekdays; nothing at weekends. Taxi firms in Girona will do the run for about €80 if you fancy bankruptcy. Mobile coverage is patchy on the approach; screenshot directions or prepare to meet confused sheep while you hunt for signal.

The Catch

Sagàs is not for everyone. Nightlife ends when the bar closes at half-past ten. The nearest supermarket is a twenty-minute drive. If it rains solidly, options shrink to reading the one English paperback left in your room or joining the locals to watch El tiempo on TVE. Children addicted to Fortnite will complain about the Wi-Fi. Bring wellies, a good map and a tolerance for silence.

Yet for travellers who measure value in birdsong density and the smell of newly cut lucerne, Sagàs delivers. You will leave with boots coated in red clay, a camera full of stone lintels, and the odd guilty memory of Els Casals’ caramelised apple tart. Just don’t tell the crowds heading for the ski pistes. Some places are better left exactly as they are – running, like the tractor outside the church, on their own unhurried clock.