Les Masies de Roda

The sat-nav voice gives up halfway up the GV-5205. One moment it is reciting distances, the next it admits defeat and leaves you staring at a fork between two stone walls where the tarmac narrows to a single car’s width. Whichever track you choose, you will soon spot a terracotta-roofed masia half-buried in oak scrub, smoke curling from a chimney even in May. That is Les Masies de Roda: not a nucleated village but a loose federation of working farms strung across 47 sq km of Catalan upland, 470 m above sea-level and six kilometres north-west of Vic.

A Parish without a Main Street

There is no plaza mayor, no row of souvenir shops, no single bar where locals gather. Instead, the municipality is a jigsaw of hamlets—El Pla de Roda, La Creu del Socors, La Guàrdia—linked by farm tracks that double as walking routes. The council keeps a basic road map at the tiny information hut beside Sant Pere de Roda church; pick it up before you do anything else. Without it you will spend the afternoon wondering whether the tractor ahead is a traffic jam or an impromptu guided tour.

The eleventh-century parish church itself stands alone, Romanesque bones dressed in later centuries, its bell tower skewed slightly by Pyrenean earthquakes. The cemetery next door is still in active service: plastic flowers in Catalan colours, headstones carved with the same family names you will see on nearby letterboxes. Sunday mass at 11 a.m. is the closest thing the area has to a social hub; visitors are welcomed, but photography during the homily is frowned upon.

How to Read the Landscape

Cereal fields, not olive groves, roll away on either side of the lanes. This is the cereal belt of Osona, where wheat and barley alternate with fodder crops for the dairy herds that supply Vic’s famous mató cheese. Between April and mid-June the hills glow an almost improbable green; by late July the colour has drained to gold and the air smells of dry straw and cow manure—an honest, peppery scent that city nostrils mistake for freshness.

The Sau reservoir laps at the lower edge of the municipality. From the church it is a ten-minute downhill drive to the water-level bridge at the dam. British visitors expecting a Lake District vista are sometimes underwhelmed: summer levels can drop ten metres, exposing a pale bathtub ring of rock. Still, the stony shore is quiet even in August, and the water is clean enough for a swim if you bring plastic shoes to negotiate the gravel entry. No lifeguards, no ice-cream van, just the echo of the A-17 viaduct far above.

Walking without Waymarks

Officially there are three sign-posted circuits: the 5 km Camí de les Fonts, the 9 km Volta de Roda and the 14 km Sau Panoràmic. In practice the paint blisters off wooden posts faster than the council replaces them. Better to download the free Wikiloc tracks while you still have 4G in Vic, then switch to aeroplane mode and follow the red line on your phone. The gradients are gentle—this is not the Lake District—but shade is scarce and summer temperatures brush 32 °C by noon. Set off early, carry more water than you think necessary, and accept that every third gate will have a barking dog whose chain looks suspiciously long.

A more reliable alternative is the converted railway that hugs the Ter river between Vic and Manlleu. Park at the Gusiola trailhead (signed from the C-17) and cycle north-east for as far as you like; the surface is compacted gravel, manageable on a hybrid. Bike hire is available at Vic’s old station for €18 a day—reserve online because the shop shuts for siesta between 13:30 and 16:00, a detail British guidebooks still treat as a misprint.

What Passes for Gastronomy

Les Masies itself has no restaurant, only a bakery van that toots through on Tuesday and Friday mornings. Self-catering is the default, which means a preliminary supermarket sweep in Vic. The Eroski on the northern ring-road stocks local butifarra if you want to try Catalan sausages without the embarrassment of asking for the “non-spicy one” in a cramped deli. Most farmhouses let via Airbnb have brick-built barbecues; the smell of pork fat drifting across the valley at dusk is as traditional as any folk dance.

If you insist on table service, drive to Espurna del Ter in Roda de Ter (ten minutes). The tasting menu (€38, weekday lunch) is written in Catalan, but staff will swap the blood-pudding course for roasted aubergine if you ask politely. Puddings tread familiar ground: crema catalana is essentially crème brûlée with a tan.

Where to Lay Your Head

Accommodation is scattered as widely as the population. There are three working farm B&Bs, two stone cottages split into apartments, and the Parador de Vic-Sau on the cliff above the reservoir. The parador is the only place with a swimming pool that does not also contain a tractor tyre; doubles start at €130 room-only in low season, rising to €210 at Easter and October half-term. Book dinner when you book the room—weekend tables fill with wedding parties from Barcelona who think nothing of driving an hour for paella and a view. Light sleepers should ask for the rear wing: Spanish receptions finish nearer two than midnight.

The Seasons Spelled Out

Spring, from mid-April to late May, is the sweet spot. Wild poppies stripe the wheat, daytime temperatures sit in the low twenties and night frosts have retreated upslope. Autumn is almost as good, especially for mushroom foragers; a personal permit (€8) is required and can be bought online, but rangers rarely check unless you emerge with a laundry sack of ceps. August is hot, still and largely visitor-free—paradoxically quiet because Spaniards head to the Costa Brava, but too scorching for comfortable walking unless you start at dawn. Winter brings snow perhaps twice a year; the GV-5205 is gritted, yet a hire car without winter tyres can be turned back by a single patch of ice on the north-facing hairpin above the dam.

The Honest Verdict

Les Masies de Roda will not suit travellers who measure a destination by the number of tick-box sights. Its charm—if that word is allowed—lies in what it refuses to organise for you. There is no gift shop, no interpretive centre, no ticket booth, and that is precisely why you may pass an entire afternoon without hearing English. Come prepared with groceries, offline maps and a tolerance for barking dogs, and the reward is a corner of Catalonia where agriculture continues because it must, not because it photographs well. Miss the bakery van, however, and breakfast will be dry crackers. Plan accordingly.