Alpens

The forge fires have gone cold, yet Alpens still smells faintly of iron on damp mornings. Walk past the stone troughs that once cooled red-hot horseshoes and you’ll see rust blooming on every gate, every nail, every balcony bracket. This was Catalonia’s smithy for three centuries, and the village wears its metalwork like a birthmark.

At 855 metres, Alpens perches on the lip of the Pyrenean foothills where the plain of Vic crumbles into forested folds. The altitude knocks the Mediterranean edge off the climate: nights stay cool even in July, while winter can trap the single road in with snow for a day or two. Locals like to say they have “two seasons and a half”: green spring, golden autumn, and a short summer just long enough to ripen the kitchen-garden tomatoes.

A one-hour village, if you skip the hills

British visitors generally allow sixty minutes—long enough to photograph the sixteenth-century Baroque church of Santa Maria d’Alpens, drink a cortado on the plaça, and wonder what to do next. That timetable works, provided you arrive when the church is open (mass at 11:00 Sunday; otherwise ask at the ajuntament opposite). Inside, the single nave is unexpectedly airy, its side chapels crowded with gilt and painted wood that feels more Seville than pre-Pyrenees. Step out again and the only other “sight” is the small iron museum in the old forge, but the door is often locked unless you’ve telephoned ahead the previous day.

The plaça offers free parking and a bench in the shade of a cedar planted in 1898. From here the village unravels along three short streets and a handful of stone alleys wide enough for a donkey, not a Range Rover. Houses alternate between immaculate restorations and 1970s brick boxes—no-one ever told Alpens about the uniform-chocolate-box rule. You will not find souvenir shops; you will find a single bakery that sells cigarettes, batteries, and the best ensaïmada for thirty kilometres.

Walking tracks that reward the extra mile

Stay longer and Alpens begins to make sense. Old mule paths strike out from the last lamp-post into holm-oak and pine. One gentle hour climbs to the ruined masía of Colltort, where swallows nest in the rafters and the Pyrenees slide into view. A stiffer loop continues to the monastery of Sant Martí del Clús, a romanesque chapel balanced on a limestone bluff—six kilometres there and back, 250 metres of ascent, and usually no-one else on the trail except a farmer shifting sheep. Spring brings purple orchids and the smell of thyme crushed underfoot; October turns the beech woods copper and sends wild boar rustling through the acorns. The paths are way-marked, but Catalan markings assume you already know where you’re going: download the GPX or take the Institut Cartogràfic map sold in the bakery for €4.50.

Mountain-bikers can link a string of forest roads that roller-coaster over to Lluçà, but the surface is clay—after rain it clings like Welsh mud and will block your wheels solid. Road cyclists relish the climb from the plain: 11 km at 5 %, shadeless in summer, with a final ramp of 10 % under the village arch. Bring low gears and enough water to reach the fountain in the plaça; there is no café between the valley floor and altitude 855 m.

Lunch, or the hunt for it

Alpens has one restaurant, El Casino d’Alpens (open Tue–Sun, closed Monday, cash only). Locals treat it like a social club: cards in the corner, television muted, grandchildren racing between tables. The three-course menú del día costs €14 and changes with whatever the boss bought in Vic market. Expect grilled chicken, proper chips, and a salad that still holds the garden’s soil on the lettuce. Vegetarians survive on trinxat—cabbage and potato cake bound with streaky bacon, the Catalan cousin of bubble-and-squeak. Ask for pa amb tomàquet: toast rubbed with tomato, olive oil, and salt; even picky British teenagers eat it. Beer comes in 33 cl bottles, chilled to near-frozen, a blessed relief after a hot walk.

There is no other food outlet. If El Casino is shut, the nearest alternative is in Lluçà (10 min drive) or the roadside grill on the C-17. Bring cash: Alpens has no ATM and the restaurant’s card reader expired in 2019.

Iron ghosts and living bells

The forge chimney still rises behind the church, brickwork fissured by frosts. Inside, trip hammers the size of seaside donkeys stand frozen mid-beat. Until 1950 this building rang like a cathedral of iron; now the silence feels deliberate, almost respectful. Pick up the handset of the audio guide (€2, Spanish/Catalan only) and you’ll learn that Alpens supplied horseshoes for the Carlist wars, rail spikes for the Barcelona–Zaragoza line, and the wrought-iron balconies still coveted in Vic’s old quarter. Children can hammer a cold nail into a leather strap to take home—primitive, satisfying, and the only souvenir on offer.

Evenings belong to the church bells. They strike the quarters through the night, a gentle reminder that 273 inhabitants still mark time by bronze rather than iPhone. Light pollution is negligible; step outside the village and the Milky Way spills across the sky like split sugar. August brings shooting-star nights: spread a jacket on the football pitch and count twenty an hour while bats flick past your ears.

Getting there, getting away

Fly to Barcelona from any major UK airport (2 hrs 15 mins). Hire a car at Terminal 2—Alpens is 110 km north, last 20 km on the C-25 and L-524, both well-paved but twisty. Total drive time 1 hr 40 mins, assuming you resist the outlet mall at Manresa. Public transport is essentially a school bus to Berga; tourists should not rely on it. In winter carry snow socks or chains: the L-524 tops 1,000 m before dropping into the village and is the last stretch to be cleared.

Leave time for the detours. South lies Vic, whose Saturday market fills the medieval plaça with cheese, linen, and shouting. North, the Cardener gorge narrows to a canyon where griffon vultures circle overhead. Link the two and you have a circular day of barely 80 km, yet you’ll climb and descend the equivalent of Ben Nevis twice.

Alpens will never shout for attention. It offers an hour of stone and silence, or a weekend of empty trails and star-thick nights. Arrive expecting the Pyrenean postcard and you’ll leave underwhelmed; arrive ready for iron-scented air, unpredictable lunches, and the creak of pines in a cool wind, and the village will repay you with the sort of quiet that Britain lost sometime around 1955.