Castellfollit de la Roca

The stone houses of Castellfollit de la Roca have their backs to the void. Stand at the junction of Carrer Major and Carrer de la Riera and you can feel it: a cool updraft rising 50 m from the Fluvià valley, the faint smell of river moss, and the knowledge that one more step backwards would be your last. The village sits on a fin of volcanic rock barely wider than a supermarket aisle, yet 960 m long—an airborne spine hurled up by two lava flows 200,000 years apart.

The Edge of the Map

Most visitors see the place from the lay-by on the GI-522, snap the postcard shot, and drive on to Besalú ten minutes away. That explains why, at 11 a.m. on a Saturday in April, the coach bay is grid-locked and the top car park turns away anything wider than a Fiat 500. Arrive before ten and you still have a fighting chance of one of the 30 free spaces on the cliff itself; after that you descend to the lower gravel strip and walk up through allotments of leeks and artichokes—an eight-minute calf-warm-up that reminds you the village sits 296 m above sea-level, high enough for the air to feel thinner and the sun sharper than on the Costa Brava beaches 60 km east.

The old town is essentially one street. Cobbles the colour of wet slate run north–south for barely 400 m, flanked by dark basalt walls that absorb light and heat. Windows are few and deep-set; the houses have grown inward, away from the drop. Half-way along, the thirteenth-century church of Sant Salvador blocks the way like a stone toll-gate, its Romanesque bell-tower restored in the sixteenth century with funds from sheep-tax. Step past the porch and the ground falls away on three sides—an abrupt geology lesson in what happens when Iberia drifts over a hot spot.

Walking on Cooled Lava

There is no charge for entering the historic centre, only the toll of common sense: rubber soles, not flip-flops. Morning dew turns the polished basalt into an ice-rink; after rain the local pharmacist does a brisk trade in plasters. The single interpretive centre—housed in the old hospital at the south end—explains how each house was built from the same hexagonal columns you are now slipping on. Admission is €3 and the reward is a scale model that lights up to show how successive lava sheets created the cliff. Children treat it like a fairground; adults emerge realising why their hire-car vibrated on the approach road—those geometric ridges are the tops of cooled lava pillows.

Beyond the model, the centre sells a €1 leaflet that maps the Ruta dels Tres Ponts, a two-hour loop down to the river, across two medieval stone bridges, and back up through oak scrub. The path is way-marked but steep; winter visitors may find the final 200 m closed after heavy rain when the Fluvià swallows the towpath. Spring and autumn are kinder: temperatures sit in the low twenties, wild marjoram scents the air, and the only sound is the clang of distant cowbells.

What Passes for Lunch

Castellfollit is too small for a restaurant row. Choices are Cala Paula, Can Roc, and the bakery Forn de Pa. At Cala Paula the weekend set lunch costs €28 and delivers exactly what it promises—grilled pork escalope, chips, half a bottle of house red—safe territory for teenagers who think aioli is exotic. Can Roc does a credible vegetable paella but runs out by two o’clock if coaches arrive early. The real prize is the bakery: almond biscuits called carquinyolis that survive the flight home better than any bottle of Rioja. They emerge from the wood oven at 9 a.m.; by noon the tray is empty and the baker closes until tomorrow.

Thirsty hikers should detour 300 m down Carrer de la Creu to Poch’s micro-brewery, open Friday to Sunday. The wheat beer tastes of Seville-orange peel and is sold in one-litre screw-top bottles that fit a bike cage. British craft fans compare it to Blue Moon, then discover it costs €3.50 and ask the landlord why he isn’t famous yet. He shrugs—Catalan independence politics, licensing laws, take your pick.

The Crowds and the Quiet

Tourism here is tidal. Between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. the alley echoes with Galician accents and the beep of reversing coaches. Come four o’clock the last espresso cup clinks in Can Roc and the village reverts to its 500 residents. That is the moment to walk the length of the cliff again: the light has swung round, the basalt glows bronze, and swifts wheel below your feet like fighter jets in a canyon. In January the scene is yours alone; the trade-off is that the interpretive centre shuts for the month and the bakery switches to weekend-only hours. July and August bring 30 °C heat that shimmers off the rock until well past sunset—carry water because the public fountain at the church door is often dry.

Winter brings its own drama. When the tramuntana wind barrels down from the Pyrenees 60 km north, the cliff becomes a launch ramp for mist that rolls up the valley like a cold tsunami. Photographers love it; drivers hate it because the GI-522 ices over. Snow is rare but not unknown—February 2018 left 5 cm on the bell-tower and closed the road for six hours. If you are staying in Olot 12 km away (and you probably are—Castellfollit has no hotel) check the Ajuntament Twitter feed before setting out.

One Hour, or One Day?

The honest timetable is 45 minutes to stroll the street, ten more for the church, another twenty if you queue for biscuits. Stretch it to half a day by adding the Ruta dels Tres Ponts and a beer on the brewery terrace. Attempt to fill a whole day and you will find yourself photographing the same houses from increasingly contorted angles while wondering if the baker will adopt you.

Better to treat the village as the curtain-raiser to the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park. Five kilometres north, the crater of Santa Margarida hides a meadow inside its rim like a secret garden; the Croscat volcano has had its flank quarried away, exposing a layered cross-section you can walk through. Both are reachable on the same small roads that brought you here, and both have parking large enough for the Volvo you should have hired instead of that seven-seat people-carrier.

Leave before dusk and the cliff retreats in the rear-view mirror, a dark fin cutting across the green quilt of cereal fields. It looks impossibly fragile, as if the next lava flow—say, 200,000 years from now—might simply flick it away. For the moment, though, the houses cling on, their inhabitants quietly certain that living on the brink is worth the view.