Calldetenes

The stream that once fed eight watermills still runs, barely ankle-deep, along the southern edge of Calldetenes. Follow it for twenty minutes and the cornfields part to reveal a tenth-century fortress—Castell de Llaés—its stone keep now a self-catering stronghold that British families hire by the week for the price of a middling Brighton hotel. Nobody stumbles on the village by accident; you leave the C-17, skip past Vic’s cathedral spire, and realise the map has run out of yellow roads.

Fields, Fog and a Friday Night Table

At 480 metres the Plain of Vic is high enough to trap winter mist that rolls in from the Pyrenees. From November to March the fields glow orange beneath low cloud, and the church bell of Sant Martí strikes the hour half a minute late because the metal contracts in the cold. Mornings smell of wood smoke and wet straw; by 11 a.m. the sun usually burns through, turning the lanes into long, straight invitations for walking boots or hybrid bikes. OS maps don’t exist here, but the town hall website prints a one-page PDF—distance in kilometres, gradient almost nil.

Come spring, the same tracks are hemmed with poppies and the scent of flowering alfalfa. Farmers work 60-hectare plots that have been subdivided since medieval times; you can trace the boundaries by the dry-stone walls that separate wheat from chickpeas. There is no souvenir shop, no medieval bar selling €8 sangria. Instead, the social centre is Bar Restaurant la Pau, where a set lunch (three courses, carafe included) costs €14 and the menu is chalked in Catalan. Try tripa a la catalana—tripe simmered with morcilla and beans—then claim the sofa corner by the wood-burner and listen to the barman phone the baker to check how many coques (flatbreads) he’ll need for Saturday’s crowd.

A Castle You Can Sleep In

Castell de Llaés is technically inside Calldetenes parish limits, though the access lane starts in the next village. The keep sleeps 14 across vaulted rooms; thick walls mean Wi-Fi reaches the kitchen only if you leave the door open. English bookings are handled by a Sussex agency—expect cooling stone floors, a long refectory table and a roof terrace that surveys 30 km of farmland. Guests usually arrive with supermarket hauls from Vic, then don’t move for three days except to walk the 3-km Ruta dels Molins, a loop that passes ruined millstones and an ivy-covered aqueduct. Children paddle in the stream; dogs chase swallows. The only noise after dark is the occasional freight train threading through Vic, its headlight floating across the plain like a slow comet.

If a whole fortress feels excessive, there are two rural B&Bs closer to the nucleus: Cal’Eduard (two doubles, English spoken after a fashion) and Cal Ton (shared bathroom, resident donkey). Both sit among carob and walnut trees; hosts will lend you a map showing how to reach the castle on foot in 40 minutes, provided you don’t mind stiles designed for Catalan legs.

One Michelin Star, Zero Pretension

Calldetenes’ single claim to gastronomic fame is Can Jubany, a farmhouse restaurant awarded its first Michelin star in 2012. The dining room occupies the old hay loft; beams are blackened with centuries of grain dust, but the glass wall looks onto a kitchen garden where staff snip herbs between courses. A five-course tasting menu is €85, wine pairing another €38—roughly half what you’d pay in London for equivalent rigour. Chef Nandu Jubany trained in the Costa Brava and keeps the flavours recognisable: salt-cod brandade with crunchy pig’s-ear crackling, or a butifarra sausage glazed in reduced local beer. Sunday lunch fills up with Barcelona families; weekday evenings are quieter, and the sommelier has time to explain why Catalan trepat makes a soft, Beaujolais-style red.

Book ahead, but don’t overdress—trainers pass unnoticed. If you miss out, Vic offers cheaper thrills: Saturday’s covered market (7 a.m.–2 p.m.) sells fuet sausages for a fiver and slices of mountain cheese so nutty they taste like sherry.

What to Do When the Mist Clears

Serious walkers head north to the Montseny massif, 25 minutes by car, where peaks top 1,700 m and beech woods hide 11th-century hermitages. Calldetenes itself is better for half-day ambles. Start at Carrer del Blanqueig, where parking is free and unobtrusive, and follow the yellow-painted Mill Walk signs. The path crosses the riera six times on stone slabs; after heavy rain the last crossing may be underwater—wellies, not flip-flops. Cyclists can string together 25 km of farm tracks forming a figure-eight through Taradell and Tona; surfaces are compacted gravel, fine for hybrids, lethal for skinny road tyres.

Birdlife is understated but present: hoopoes in the poplars, red-legged partridge whirring across stubble, and every November a short-eared owl that hunts the uncut edges of the cereal fields. Bring binoculars and patience; the landscape is too domestic for eagles but perfect for farmland specialists British watchers rarely see south of Thetford.

Vic Next Door

Five kilometres south, Vic absorbs most of the region’s tourists with its Roman temple, neoclassical cathedral and weekly market that clogs the plaça major with 500 stalls. Go early on Tuesday or Saturday, park in the underground Avingida de la Generalitat (€1.80 for two hours), then drift between cheese counters and second-hand book stands. The Episcopal Museum houses a gilt-bronze 10th-century altarpiece that glows like a medieval sunrise; entry is €7.50 and the audioguide is available in English. Lunch options range from student bars serving €3 bocadillos to the more formal Jardinet, where a three-course weekday menu is €22 and the duck confit falls off the bone.

Back in Calldetenes the pace drops again. Evening entertainment is limited to the summer festes d’estiu—outdoor sardana dancing, cheap beer in plastic cups, and a Catalan cover band murdering Bruce Springsteen. British visitors often find themselves the only foreigners; expect friendly curiosity and invitations to join the botifarra queue. Fireworks finish by 11 p.m.; neighbours have cows to milk at dawn.

When to Come, When to Stay Away

April–mid-June and mid-September–October give clear skies, fresh air and green lanes without the summer furnace. Temperatures hover around 22 °C by day, 10 °C at night—perfect walking fleece weather. August tops 35 °C and the stream dries to a trickle; locals vanish to coastal second homes, leaving the village eerily quiet by day and strangely noisy at night as the remaining teenagers rev mopeds beneath the plane trees. Winter is crisp, often sunny, but fog can linger until noon and short days limit exploring time. Snow is rare; when it arrives the castle looks magical, yet the lanes ice over and the Catalan solution is to scatter straw, not grit—drive carefully.

Bank holidays in Catalonia turn Vic into a traffic jam and Calldetenes into an overspill car park. Check the calendar for puentes (long weekends) and either arrive before 10 a.m. or stay in the castle and refuse to move.

The Bottom Line

Calldetenes will never make a “Top Ten Catalan Hideaways” list because it lacks beaches, ski lifts and postcard plazas. What it offers instead is a working slice of inland Catalonia where castle rentals cost less than a Devon cottage, Michelin-starred dinners come without London mark-ups, and the loudest sound at night is a tawny owl negotiating the church tower. Bring a phrasebook, waterproof shoes and an appetite for pork. Leave the bucket list at home—here the bucket is for collecting windfall almonds, and nobody’s ticking anything off.