Sentmenat

The morning bus from Sabadell wheezes to a halt beside a petrol station that doubles as the village centre. From here, Sentmenat unfurls uphill: a grid of quiet streets where the clack of manual typewriters still drifts from the council offices and every third doorway hides a vegetable patch. At 207 metres above sea level, the air is noticeably cooler than Barcelona's, 30 kilometres to the south-east – a fact locals mention within minutes of meeting you, as though altitude were a personal achievement.

Stone, Brick and the Smell of Pine

Walk north from the parish church of Sant Menna and the houses thin out within five minutes. Suddenly you're on a dirt track between carob trees, the motorway hum replaced by cicadas. This is the edge of Sant Llorenç del Munt i l'Obac Natural Park, 14,000 hectares of sandstone crags and holm-oak forest that begins where the pavement ends. Way-marked paths fan out like bicycle spokes: the gentle 6-kilometre loop to Can Vinyals farmhouse takes ninety minutes and ends at a spring where the water tastes of iron; the stiffer climb to Castell de Guanta adds another 400 metres of ascent and delivers views that, on clear winter days, pick out the pyramid silhouette of Montserrat 40 kilometres away.

Summer walking is best finished before eleven. By midday the thermometer kisses 32°C and the undergrowth crackles like newspaper. Spring and autumn are kinder: 18°C, wild rosemary scenting the air, and the occasional wild-boar print pressed into the mud. After heavy rain the lower trails turn slick with clay – decent treads essential, otherwise you'll skate like a novice on ice.

A Working Town, Not a Film Set

Sentmenat refuses to pose. The old centre is a mish-mash: seventeenth-century masia (farmhouse) beside 1970s brick, satellite dishes sprouting above Gothic lintels. Can Vilar, the listed manor on Carrer Major, is now three separate flats; knock and you'll be met by a Labrador and a woman in cycling gear who apologises that the stone staircase is "private, darling". Round the corner, the Font de la Bassa still draws pensioners filling plastic jugs for household plants. They gossip in Catalan, swap courgette seeds and regard tourists with benign curiosity rather than commercial hunger.

Weekday lunch is the best time to watch daily life tick over. Between 13:30 and 15:00 the baker pulls down shutters, schoolchildren career across Plaça de l'Església, and the bar under the arcades serves three-course menús del día for €13.50. Expect grilled pork shoulder, white beans and a glass of warmish red poured from a one-litre bottle – no frills, but the beans were dried on-site last autumn and the pork came from a farm six kilometres north.

Getting Here, Getting Out

There is no railway station. The L3 bus from Sabadell runs every thirty minutes, takes twenty, and drops you beside that same petrol-cum-bus-stop. From Barcelona, ride the Rodalies train to Sabadell (FGC line, 35 minutes from Plaça Catalunya, day-return €7.60) then change. A hire car is simpler: leave the AP-7 at Barberà, follow the C-1413 for twelve minutes, park free on Avinguda de la Pau. In winter the BV-1481 over the ridge can ice up after dusk; carry chains if snow is forecast.

Cyclists arrive in pelotons. Sunday mornings the road from Polinyà is a carousel of neon Lycra climbing steadily at 6% gradients. Local clubs use the 40-kilometre circuit that loops through Castellar del Vallès and return via the forest service track – tarmac smooth, traffic thin before ten o'clock, water fountain in Palau-solità i Plegamans for refills.

When the Sirens Start

Late September brings the Festa Major de Sant Menna. By 22:00 the narrow streets fill with correfocs – devils hurling fireworks from pitchforks – and the smell of gunpowder drifts into open windows. Giants nine feet tall lurch through the crowd to the beat of a samba drum, children riding parental shoulders shriek at the sparks. At midnight half the village hikes up to the ruined castle above the treeline for coca (sweet flatbread) and sparkling wine; the smarter ones carry torches because mobile reception dies halfway up the track. Book accommodation early – the two guest rooms at Masia Can Cladelles disappear months ahead.

Where to Sleep, What to Eat

Bedrooms are scarce. Can Cladelles offers three rustic doubles from €90, breakfast included: home-made fig jam, fresh coca and coffee strong enough to revive the dead. They'll lend mountain-bike hybrids if you ask nicely. Alternative is back in Sabadell, four-star Hotel Arrahona, doubles €75, seven-minute walk from the bus.

For dinner, the same masia converts its stone barn into a restaurant. Expect pa amb tomàquet, lamb shoulder slow-roasted with thyme, and crema catalana finished under a blow-torch at your table. Sunday lunch on the terrace at Castell de Guanta does a credible vegetarian paella (€18) while you gaze across the valley at the ridge you could have walked had you started earlier. Reserve; they still write bookings in a paper ledger and when it's full, it's full.

The Morning After

Check-out time coincides with the 08:15 market in Plaça Nova: three stalls, one selling onions the size of cricket balls, another razor-sharp knives from Solsona. Buy a wedge of tupí cheese matured in olive oil – it travels better than the local butifarra sausage and won't leak in your rucksack. By nine the first commuter cars nose towards the industrial estates, and Sentmenat slips back into weekday anonymity. The mountains wait, patient and pine-scented, for the next visitor willing to walk ten minutes beyond the last house.