Ripoll

At 690 metres above sea level, Ripoll's morning air carries something sharper than mountain freshness. It's the scent of a thousand years of charcoal burners, iron forges and wool mills drifting up the valley of the Ter. Stand on the stone bridge at dawn and you'll see mist lifting off the river like smoke from workshops that no longer exist, while the 12th-century monastery bell still tolls the same hour it did when this town effectively invented Catalonia.

That monastery is why people make the 90-minute train ride north from Barcelona, but Ripoll refuses to behave like a museum. Between the rivers Ter and Freser, locals queue at the bakery for pa de pagès sourdough while delivery vans squeeze past medieval arches. Schoolchildren cut across the cloister gardens where their great-grandparents once gathered chestnuts for castanyada festivals. History here isn't cordoned off with ticket barriers; it's the scaffolding of everyday life.

The Count Who Painted a Nation

Santa Maria de Ripoll's west doorway hits you like a Romanesque comic strip. Carved in 1150, the stone erupts with 300 biblical scenes crammed into seven archivolts – Adam scratching his head in the Garden, Noah's ark looking suspiciously like a Mediterranean fishing boat, demons prodding the damned with tridents sharp enough to make a Kentish miser flinch. Count Guifré el Pilós (Wilfred the Hairy to medieval English chroniclers) founded the place in 879, supposedly after wiping out a Saracen raiding party with his bare hands. The monks later embroidered the tale, but the parchment they kept here became Catalonia's first written legal code. Without this scriptorium, Barcelona might still be paying taxes to Cordoba.

Inside, 19th-century restorers rebuilt the five-nave basilica after a fire, yet they kept the original proportions. Light filters through alabaster windows onto Gothic tombs of counts who look surprisingly small; chain mail doesn't photograph well when you're five foot two. The two-storey cloister mixes squat Romanesque columns with later Gothic fragility – a visible timeline of shifting architectural confidence. Visit on the last Sunday of the month and admission is free, though the €7 ticket includes an audio guide that explains why the Pantocrator Christ has one lazy eye (stone masons worked by candlelight; mistakes were permanent).

Round the corner, the Ethnographic Museum occupies the monastery's old grain store. Labels are Catalan-only, so download the camera-translate app before you go. Inside, a 19th-century loom still smells of lanolin, and there's a tramuntana snowshoe fashioned from bent ash that looks like a tennis racket designed by someone who'd never seen a tennis racket. The display on transhumance – driving sheep to high summer pastures – explains why local lamb tastes of thyme and altitude. Allow an hour; skip it if you're racing for the hills.

Smokestacks and Shepherd Paths

Ripoll's Industrial Revolution arrived via waterwheels. Follow the river downstream ten minutes and you'll reach the Farga Palau, a 17th-century ironworks whose Catalan forge once produced cannon barrels for the Habsburgs. The hammer stones still bear scallop shapes where metal met rock; stand inside on a wet day and you half expect soot-faced strikers to emerge from the shadows. Further along, brick chimneys from 1850s textile mills rise like red sequoias. One has been converted into flats, another houses a climbing wall – pragmatic recycling that would make a Manchester developer weep.

Yet the mountains never let you forget them. The Camí Vell de Sant Joan starts opposite the petrol station, climbing through holm oak to the Ermita de Sant Joan de les Abadesses in 45 minutes. From the chapel terrace the town shrinks to a Lego set between saw-toothed ranges; you can trace the railway threading north toward France and imagine smugglers hauling coffee and nylon across the ridge during the 1940s. The path continues to Coll de Jou, where shepherds still overnight in stone huts, but turn back unless you've brought water – altitude dehydrates faster than you expect, even in May.

Cyclists prefer the Via Verde del Ferro, a converted railway that glides 12 km down-valley to Sant Joan de les Abadesses. The surface is compacted gravel wide enough for a side-by-side tandem, and the gradient never exceeds 2%. Hire bikes at Ripoll Entre Rius on Carrer Progrés – €18 for four hours, helmets included. Pack a jacket: the return trip is gently uphill and valley shadows drop the temperature five degrees by 4 pm.

What to Eat When the Mist Rolls In

Ripoll food is mountain fuel. Trinxat – cabbage, potato and canalons of streaky bacon mashed then fried in pork fat – arrives sizzling like a Pyrenean bubble-and-squeak. Local restaurants serve it as a starter, but one portion could anchor a Cumbrian shepherd. Xai del Ripollès lamb is hung for a week, developing the faint gamey edge British butchers once called high. Try it at Can Trona on Plaça de l'Ajuntament; the chef roasts shoulder with rosemary and drippings from the joint itself, no Mediterranean frippery. Three courses with wine run about €28 – less than you'd pay for a single rack in Borough Market.

Winter demands escudella, a two-course stew that starts as broth with galets (giant pasta shells) and finishes with the boiled meats fished out afterwards. Order it Thursday lunchtime at Hotel Prats; they simmer the pot since dawn. Vegetarians get timbal de bolets, a layered mushroom tart that tastes of pine forests after rain. Pudding is crema catalana burnt to order – the waiter brandishes an iron salamander like a small knight preparing joust.

Coffee culture follows Catalan rules: breakfast is a cafe amb llet and croissant until 11 am, then nothing until the 5 pm merienda. Try Pastisseria Roura for panellets (almond buns) if you're visiting around All Saints; they make them with sweet potato rather than the usual potato, a Moorish hangover that survives 700 years of Christianity.

Trains, Tickets and Timetables

Rodalies line R3 connects Barcelona Sants to Ripoll roughly hourly; the journey takes 1 hour 50 minutes through foothills that turn from limestone to slate as you climb. Buy a T-10 three-zone ticket (€26.75) if you're planning day trips – it works on Barcelona metro too. Trains have bike racks, but only two spaces per carriage; board early on Saturdays. Driving from Calais takes 10 hours via Perpignan and Figueres, then the C-17 autopista after Vic. Fill up before the mountains – Spanish fuel is cheaper than French, and Ripoll's lone petrol station closes Sundays.

Parking is straightforward: the riverside Passeig de la Stació is free and rarely full, a five-minute riverside stroll from the monastery. Ignore unofficial car-park attendants waving orange batons at weekends – the police move them on, but not before they've extracted €5 from confused tourists. Saturday morning market sets up along Passeig de la Generalitat; locals haggle over botifarra sausages and wild mushrooms that foragers bring in newspaper cones. Bring cash – many stalls lack card readers, and the nearest ATM charges €2 per withdrawal.

Evenings cool sharply whatever the season. In July the thermometer can read 32 °C at 3 pm and 14 °C by midnight; British visitors routinely borrow hotel blankets in August. Winter brings proper snow – the town sits below the ski resorts of Vall de Núria and La Molina, but access roads close when the tramuntana wind whips up drifts. Check traffic reports before setting out; Spanish gritters prioritise the autopista, not the mountain passes.

English is thin on the ground. Younger bar staff cope, but butchers and bus drivers don't pretend. Learn three phrases: Bon dia (good day), gràcies (thanks), on és el bany? (where's the loo?). The effort earns smiles and occasionally an extra pour of wine. Sunday shutdown is absolute – if you need sandwiches for a walk, buy them Saturday night or you'll be surviving on crisps from the 24-hour garage on the N-260 bypass.

Ripoll won't change your life. It will, however, give you a Catalonia that guidebooks reserve for footnotes: a place where medieval counts, ironmasters and shepherds argue over the same pintxo bar, and where the mountains keep watch like bouncers who've seen every tourist fad come and go. Arrive curious, pack a fleece, and remember that history tastes better with a spoonful of trinxat.