Sant Sadurní d'Osormort

The tarmac stops three kilometres short of Sant Sadurní d’Osormort. From that point a stony forest lane climbs through cork oak and holm oak, narrow enough that meeting a timber lorry means one of you must reverse. Mobile signal dies here; the sat-nav lady gives up. Then the trees part, the track levels, and eighty-nine stone houses appear around a Romanesque bell-tower that still tolls the hours by hand. At 530 m above the Catalan lowlands, the air is cooler, clearer, and audibly quieter than the coast ninety minutes behind you.

What’s Left When the World Turns the Volume Down

This is not a village that entertains visitors; it tolerates them politely. There is one bar, open irregularly, no shop, no cash machine, and no souvenir stall flogging fridge magnets. The parish church of Sant Sadurní, rebuilt in the sixteenth century after a fire, takes five minutes to inspect: single nave, bare walls, a wooden Christ whose paint has blistered in summer after summer of mountain heat. The reward lies outside. Forest tracks radiate like spokes, signed only by the occasional paint splash or a cairn of stones. Within ten minutes you can be alone under a canopy of oak and beech, boots crunching last autumn’s leaves, the only movement a pair of short-toed eagles circling overhead.

The landscape is worked but not tidy. Dry-stone walls buckle between meadows where lean horses graze; stone huts with slate roofs have become wood-stores or bat roosts. Every farmhouse is still inhabited, many by the same families since the 1700s. They will wave if you pass, but they do not invite conversation unless you speak Catalan. English is met with a patient smile and directions that assume you already know the way back.

Walking, Pedalling, Getting Mildly Lost

Maps are advisable. The GR-5 long-distance footpath skirts the village, dropping south-east towards the monastery of Montserrat (visible on clear days as a shark’s-tooth ridge thirty kilometres away). A gentler circuit threads north to the abandoned hamlet of Torrent, where an outdoor stone oven the size of a Mini hints at winter gatherings when the valley’s population was ten times higher. Expect two hours, 200 m of ascent, and mud that clings like wet cement from October to April.

Road cyclists regard the approach as a ritual punishment: 9 % gradients, no verge, guard rails absent when most needed. The pay-off is a road almost devoid of traffic; on a weekday morning you will hear the freewheel click more often than an engine. Mountain bikers can continue on forestry tracks towards the Montseny biosphere reserve, but after heavy rain the red clay becomes a skid pan; hire bikes in Vic first and accept that you will push.

Seasons That Change the Rules of Access

Winter arrives early. The forest track can ice over in December; if night temperatures dip below zero for three consecutive days the village council chains the gate. Residents fit winter tyres and keep going; visitors park at the barrier and walk. Snow is patchy but possible—enough to turn the olives on the terrace trees into white baubles for a morning. Spring is the reliable sweet spot: daytime 18 °C, night-time 8 °C, orchards of almond and cherry in bloom. Summer is warm rather than fierce; 30 °C feels manageable when the coast is groaning under 38 °C and package-hotel air-conditioning has given up. August still empties the village: locals drive down to rented flats in Blanes or Calella, leaving keys with a neighbour and fridges unplugged.

Supplies, Meals and the Mobile Bakery

Shopping is a forward-planning exercise. The last supermarket sits on the outskirts of Vic, twenty-five minutes away by car. Fill the boot with milk, loo roll and something for dinner because the village bar’s kitchen shuts at 17:00 and the nearest restaurant that stays open past 21:00 is in Seva, a fifteen-minute drive back down the switch-backs. Twice a week a white van toots in the square at 10:30: the forn de pa ambulant. Its owner, Xavier, slices sourdough from a wooden crate and will accept euros only—no signal for contactless out here. Locals gossip while queueing; visitors who attempt Spanish are answered in Catalan with merciful slowness.

For a blow-out lunch, drive to Taradell and book a table at Can Xarau, where a three-course menu del dia costs €18 and might include fricassee of wild boar followed by crema catalana. Vegetarians get escalivada (smoky aubergine and peppers) and the same raised eyebrow of sympathy accorded to anyone who confesses they don’t drink wine.

When the Valley Throws a Party

The festa major lands on the last weekend of August. A brass band arrives from Vic, sets up in the square, and plays until the generator runs out of diesel. There is a communal paella cooked over vine cuttings; bring your own plate and pay €5 towards the rice. Britons expecting colourful costumes or flamenco will be disappointed—this is shirtsleeves, trainers and gossip about tractor parts. The highlight, after midnight, is a correfoc: locals dressed as devils run with sparklers attached to pitchforks while children shriek and dogs hide under benches. Fireworks are low-key; health-and-safety forms conspicuously absent. If you rent one of the converted barns on the edge of the village, close the shutters or the sulphur smell will linger in your laundry.

The Honest Truth About Staying

Accommodation is self-catering, mostly farm outbuildings retro-fitted with Swedish wood-burners and infinity pools that look across treetops. Prices swing from €120 a night for a two-bedroom cottage in March to €280 in August. The British reviews are consistent: “brilliant for a digital detox,” “kids finally looked up from their phones,” “track is nerve-racking first time, fine after that.” The downside is isolation. A medical emergency means dialling 112 and waiting forty minutes for the regional ambulance to negotiate the forest lane. Taxis from Barcelona airport refuse the journey after dark; pre-book a transfer or hire a car at Terminal 2 and accept the scratch-collection on the under-body.

Rainy days shrink the options to Scrabble and a second bottle of cava from Sant Sadurní d’Anoia—twenty minutes west, unrelated to this village but the source of familiar bubbly for British palates. If that sounds like cabin fever in the making, plan day-trips in advance: Vic’s medieval market (Tuesdays and Saturdays) or the volcanic crock-pot of La Garrotxa an hour north. Barcelona is ninety minutes door-to-door when traffic behaves, which it rarely does on a Sunday evening in August.

Leaving Without a Smartphone Photo

Most visitors depart with the same discovery: they took fewer photographs than expected. The landscape refuses the panoramic: trees close in, ridges overlap, the light under the canopy is too dappled to flatten into an Instagram square. Instead the place deposits a quieter memory—the sound of a donkey braying across the valley at dawn, the smell of resin after rain, the realisation that an entire day passed without a notification ping. Sant Sadurní d’Osormort offers no storybook Spain, no souvenir tea-towels, no nightlife beyond the cicadas. What it does offer is a practical lesson in how little you actually need for twenty-four hours: bread, wine, a map that doesn’t talk back, and the willingness to walk until the signal disappears.