Riner

The tractor appears first, a distant dot crawling across wheat stubble. Then the church bell tolls—not for mass, but because it’s 11 o’clock and someone’s grandmother still keeps the old rhythm alive. In Riner, time announces itself in low-tech ways: church bells, roosters, the occasional diesel engine. At 830 metres above sea level, the Solsonès plateau feels closer to sky than to Barcelona, 110 kilometres away.

This is not the Catalonia of Gaudí and crowded tapas bars. Riner’s municipality counts 265 souls scattered among stone farmhouses, cereal fields and oak groves that fade into the pre-Pyrenean folds. There is no high street, no gift shop, no sea view. Instead you get a chessboard of small settlements—Riner, Clarà, la Masia Nova d’Aleny—linked by gravel lanes wide enough for a combine harvester and very little else.

A landscape that works for a living

Drive the LV-4243 from Solsona and the tarmac narrows until grass grows up the centre strip. Wheat, barley and sunflower plots roll like gentle swells, their colours changing faster than the British weather that follows you south: luminous green after April showers, burnt gold by July, chocolate furrows once the ploughs turn in October. Stone terraces hold back thin soils; every wall is a textbook on dry-stone engineering built by farmers who had more time than cement.

The oak woods are secondary income. Locals still harvest cork every nine years, stack it in cubes by the roadside and wait for traders from nearby Sant Llorenç. Fallen acorns feed a small herd of brown swine whose jamón rarely leaves the province; most legs are sold directly to restaurants in Solsona for €18 a kilo, half the cost you’d pay on the Costa Brava.

Architecture without architects

There is no formal centre, so “sightseeing” means pulling over when something catches the eye. Sant Martí de Riner, the 12th-century parish church, stands alone at a crossroads, its bell tower more barn than baroque. The south doorway is pure Romanesque—three simple archivolts, no fancy tympanum—but look up and you’ll spot 18th-century brickwork where someone decided the nave needed height and daylight. The key holder lives in the white house opposite; ring twice and she’ll appear with a ring of iron keys and zero commentary. Inside, the air smells of candle smoke and damp stone; the only decoration is a wooden Christ whose paint has flaked away except for the knees, worn amber by centuries of supplication.

Farmhouses follow a repeating pattern: ground floor for animals, first floor for grain, second floor for people, balcony for Sunday airing of bedding. Many are abandoned, roofs collapsed like broken pies, but enough have been restored as second homes to keep the skyline authentic. Permission to renovate is strict—new windows must be timber, shutters green or grey, no swimming pools visible from the road—so the views remain mercifully free of glass boxes.

Walking tracks that demand a sense of humour

Riner is criss-crossed by caminos that were farm tracks long before the word “hiking” entered Spanish. The PR-C 201 starts behind the church, drops into the Torrent de Riner and climbs to the abandoned hamlet of Castelltallat, four kilometres away. Marking is sporadic: a faded stripe on a fence post, a cairn where the path splits between barley and oak. Mobile signal vanishes after the first ridge; download the GPX file in Solsona or take the traditional approach and ask. Farmers in battered Land Cruisers will stop, point, and warn that the middle section is “muy embarrado” after rain—advice worth heeding because the mud here dries like concrete on boots.

Gradient is gentle, but the altitude can surprise visitors fresh from the coast. Even in May the wind carries enough bite to redden ears; pack a fleece and twice the water you think you’ll need. The reward is silence so complete you can hear your own pulse, plus views that stretch 50 kilometres south to the Montserrat saw-tooth.

What to eat and where (not) to find it

Riner itself has no bar, no shop, no ATM. The nearest bread oven is in Lladurs, eight kilometres north; it opens at 07:30 and sells out by 09:00. Plan accordingly. Regional staples appear on market day in Solsona (Tuesday and Friday): grey-truffle pecorino, river eel from the Cardener, coca flatbread smeared with escalivada. If you’re self-catering, the Consum supermarket in Solsona stocks local craft beer brewed with Pyrenean spruce tips—worth the €2.60 even if the label looks like a GCSE graphic-design project.

For a sit-down lunch, drive 20 minutes to Cal Carter in Castellar de la Ribera. The set menu costs €16 mid-week and might include xai de pastura (pasture-raised lamb) or carp with almonds and raisins, a recipe Moorish in origin and medieval in sweetness. Booking is polite; they slaughter only what they can sell.

Seasons of solitude

Spring arrives late and all at once. By mid-April almond blossom is already blowing across the tarmac like snow, but night frost can still kill tomato plants until early May. Come then and you’ll have the tracks to yourself, plus a soundtrack of skylarks and the distant clank of tractor chains.

Summer is hot, dry and surprisingly busy—busy meaning you might meet two dog-walkers instead of zero. Daytime temperatures brush 32 °C; the only shade is inside the church or under a cork oak. Afternoon wind, the cerç, rockets up the valley and makes cycling feel like a perpetual uphill.

Autumn brings mushroom hunters who guard their porcini patches with the same secrecy Kentish orchard owners reserve for morels. Locals sell extras by the roadside: a kilo of rovellons (saffron milk-caps) for €8, no questions asked.

Winter is the secret season. Skies bleach to porcelain, the wheat stubble crunches underfoot and every farmhouse chimney threads the smell of oak smoke across the plateau. Snow is rare but frost is daily; the LV-4243 ices over in dips where the sun never reaches. Chains are sensible rather than macho.

Getting here, getting round, getting stuck

Public transport stops at Solsona. From Barcelona’s Estació del Nord, the Alsina Graells bus covers the 110 kilometres in two hours for €16.70, but the last departure is 19:15; miss it and you’re sleeping on a bench. Hire a car at Barcelona airport instead; the C-55 and C-25 are motorway-standard until Solsona, after which single-track etiquette applies—pull left into the ditch if a tractor bears down with a trailer full of hay.

Petrol is available 24 h at the Solsona BP, but after midnight you’ll need a Spanish card with chip-and-pin; British contactless rarely works. Phone coverage is 4G on the plateau, GPRS in every valley; download offline maps before leaving the main road.

The bottom line

Riner will not change your life. It offers no epiphany, no selfie backdrop, no fridge magnet. What it does provide is a calibration exercise: five minutes leaning on a dry-stone wall while a booted eagle circles overhead and you remember that “slow travel” was never a hashtag, merely the speed at which soil dries after rain. Bring walking boots, a paper map and enough cash for cheese. Expect mud on your trousers, silence in your ears, and the faint suspicion that the 21st century finished somewhere back near the motorway turn-off.