Olot

The waiter at Café la Quinta sets down a cortado and, without ceremony, nods towards the window. Three metres away the ground simply stops: a perfect ring of black tuff plunging fifteen metres to a meadow of wild oats. This is Montsacopa, a volcano parked improbably inside the town grid. No ticket office, no safety rail, just a crater that locals use as a compass—“meet you on the far rim” is a perfectly sensible arrangement in Olot.

At 443 m above sea-level, the city sits in the wettest pocket of Catalonia, a fact the surrounding beech forests advertise with mossy conviction. Rain can arrive on a July afternoon without warning; an hour later the cobbles steam and the air smells of charcoal and wet basalt. The climate keeps summer temperatures ten degrees below Barcelona, which explains the steady stream of British families who break the motorway dash to the Pyrenees here, cases of Fageda yoghurt wedged between body-boards in the boot.

Craters before Coffee

Dawn is the practical time for volcanoes. Park at the southern lip of Montsacopa (free until 09:00, no barriers, no attendants) and you can circumnavigate the rim in twenty minutes, dropping into the bowl where allotment holders grow lettuces on soil no one has bothered to test for centuries. A steeper five-minute pull reaches the 360-degree platform: the Pyrenees float white on the northern horizon while, closer, forty other cones pimple the plain like a giant’s egg box. Bring the leaflet Itinerànnia Volcano Map—font sized for ants, so photograph it and zoom on your phone.

If you have children to bribe, promise the volcà plus breakfast pastries from Forn de Pa Pa-i-ra, five minutes back into town. Their xuixo—a deep-fried custard scroll rolled in sugar—was invented here and contains roughly a week’s calories; locals eat them cold, Brits usually burn their chins.

A Town that Paints its own Landscape

Olot’s prosperity once came from textiles, but the brand that stuck was paint. The Escola d’Olot turned the local lava fields and winter mists into canvases that now hang in the Museu de la Garrotxa, a former hospital on Carrer Hospici. Admission is €5; the ground-floor gallery of 19th-century volcanic views is unexpectedly moving—grey craters rendered in soft ochres, the dead land made gentle. Upstairs, a single room of Romanesque virgins provides chronological ballast. The whole visit fits inside forty minutes, perfect insurance if the clouds roll in.

Outside, the streets keep the same muted palette. Modernista façades are carved from black volcanic ash stone; balconies curl like wrought-iron ivy. There is no single headline monument—good news for anyone allergic to queueing. Instead, drift from the neo-classical front of Sant Esteve church to the covered market (open till 14:00, closed Monday) where butchers sell butifarra the width of cricket stumps and greengrocers display white beans the size of marbles—fesols del ganxet, the base of every winter stew.

Monday Warning and Other Hard Truths

Monday in Olot is a ghost shift. Roughly sixty percent of restaurants lock the door; even the volcanoes feel emptier. Plan a picnic—supermarket Condis on Avinguda Reis Catòlics stocks local formatge de cabra wrapped in chestnut leaves—or reserve at Les Cols well ahead. The two-Michelin-starred restaurant sits in a farmhouse on the northern edge; they will serve a five-course lunch if you e-mail politely, shortening the full theatrics to two hours and €75. Dishes arrive on slabs of basalt, edible geology for those who like their metaphor literal.

Even on livelier days Olot never reaches bottlenecks. Coach parties head for the coast; here you share footpaths with Catalan retirees and the odd German cyclist who has read about the vías verdes. The old railway bed from Olot to Girona has been tarmacked into a 54 km greenway; rent bikes at Cycle Tours (€18 a day, helmets included) and you can freewheel downhill for two hours to the medieval bridge at Besalú, returning by bus—number 11, €3.45, bikes stowed underneath.

Water, Earth, and a Yoghurt Interlude

The classic half-day excursion is the Fageda d’en Jordà, 8 km north-east. Approach by car on the C-152 and you crest a ridge before the road corkscrews into a hollow straight out of Tolkien: beech trunks grow from a 12 m-thick lava flow, their roots writhing over ropy basalt. The 4 km signed loop is level, pushchair-friendly, and takes ninety minutes if you keep stopping to gawp. Light is softest before 10:00; after that the coach from Barcelona discharges day-trippers and the forest starts to resemble a suburban high street. Bring the yoghurt anyway—the Fageda cooperative (glass pots, every flavour from lemon to mató cheesecake) sells from a hut in the car park. You’ll see school parties spooning it straight, teachers turning a blind eye to second helpings.

When the Clouds Refuse to Lift

Wet weather contingencies are thin but workable. The Museu dels Volcans occupies a former mansion five minutes from the centre; interactive games let children pump magma until the carpet erupts in LED lava. Adults usually linger over the earthquake simulator set to the 1428 tremor that levelled much of the town—magnitude estimates vary, but the experience is convincing enough to send teenagers Instagramming for sympathy.

Alternatively, take the car south to the Castellfollit de la Roca viewpoint: a basalt crag 1 km long and 50 m high, village houses teetering on the lip. The rain makes the cliff steam; photographers with Gore-Tex knees mutter happily about drama.

Checking Out, Heading On

Evenings slide into routine that feels local rather than staged. Pension-age residents queue for ratafia—a herb liqueur aged in volcanic cellars—at the cooperative on Carrer Bisbe Lorenzana, while younger crowds colonise the terrace of Bar Yes, lights strung across a square that still remembers civil-war bombardment. No one hustles for tips; bills arrive on scrap paper with the IVA already included.

Leave early next morning if Barcelona beckons—Teesa coaches depart Estació d’Autobusos at 07:15 and reach the Estació del Nord in 1 h 45 min, €16 paid in cash to the driver. Sit on the right for the final descent: the crater walls close in, olive trees give way to holm oak, and for twenty minutes you understand why the Romans called this region Garrotxa, the rough place. Then the motorway resumes and Olot is simply a green dent in the rear-view mirror, still puffing nothing more threatening than steam from its morning coffee.