Sant Celoni

The first thing that strikes you is the smell of grilled botifarras drifting across the AP-7 service station. Most drivers fill up, grab a coffee, and roar on towards the Costa Brava, never realising that five minutes up the road lies a town where lunch costs half Barcelona prices and the wine arrives in proper glass carafes.

Sant Celoni sits at 152 metres above sea level, low enough to feel Mediterranean yet high enough to catch the Montseny breeze. The motorway exit delivers you straight into a working Catalan town of 18,500 souls, not a prettified museum piece. Delivery vans block the narrow lanes while locals argue over football outside the Bar Central. Look up, though, and modernista balconies still curve like wrought-iron waves above the 15th-century stone. It’s this mix of graft and grace that makes the place interesting.

A Market Morning

Wednesday defines the week here. By 08:00 the square is gridlocked: farmers from the hills unload crates of chestnuts, teenagers on gap years compare mushroom knives, and someone’s grandmother sells eggs so fresh they’re still warm. The market occupies Plaça de la Vila until 14:00 sharp; arrive at 13:55 and stallholders will practically pay you to take the last artichokes. Prices are displayed in felt-tip on cardboard—no tourist mark-up, no bilingual signs. A couple of euros buys a paper cone of toasted almonds; three more gets you a slab of celonins, the local chocolate-and-almond bar that fuels hikers on the nearby trails.

If you need caffeine, Bar Plaça serves cortados for €1.30, standing room only. Order a café amb llet and you’ll get a cup the size of a soup bowl; Catalan hospitality runs on dairy.

Lunch that Stops the Clock

The British instinct is to treat Sant Celoni as a leg-stretch between Barcelona airport and the coast. Locals prefer you stay for the three-course menú del día, served 13:00-15:30 and rarely above €25 with wine. El Cruce, opposite the modernista Casa Julià Roqué, offers duck confit crisp enough to convert even the most sceptical gàstric, followed by a seafood crêpe that tastes like someone’s French grandmother has moved to Catalonia. House white comes in a 50 cl carafe; ask for vi negre and the waiter will raise an eyebrow—red in midday heat is for tourists.

Vegetarians head to El Rebost, where roasted aubergine stacks arrive under a snowfall of local goat’s cheese. Pudding is home-made chocolate cake, the sort that collapses into ganache the moment a fork approaches. Portions are generous; the Spanish don’t do dainty.

Up the Hill to Nowhere

Food coma demands movement. The ruined 11th-century castle broods on a scrubby hill ten minutes above the old town. The path starts behind the church, signed in Catalan only—follow the graffiti that reads “castell” with an arrow. It’s steep, shadeless, and the ultimate reward is a few stone walls and a view of the AP-7 snaking towards France. Yet on a clear afternoon you can pick out the Pyrenees, snow still streaking the high ridges in April. Take water; there’s no café at the top, only thistle and the smell of pine resin heating in the sun.

Down in the streets again, duck into the Parròquia de Sant Martí. The building isn’t cathedral-grand, but its patched stonework tells the town story: Romanesque base, Gothic enlargement, Baroque façade after the 1428 earthquake. The cool interior smells of candle wax and floor polish—exactly the scent of every Spanish childhood. Drop a coin in the box and the lights flick on to reveal a 16th-century altarpiece whose gold still glints despite the priests’ best efforts at humility.

Forests without the Fanfare

Sant Celoni trades on its gateway status to the Montseny Natural Park, a UNESCO biosphere reserve that rises to 1,700 m within half an hour’s drive. Most British visitors never get that far. Instead they follow the gentle 4 km loop that starts at the information hut on the eastern edge of town. The trail follows the Torrent de la Font del Ferro, a stream that becomes a proper waterfall after heavy rain. Mid-summer it’s reduced to mossy rock and dragonflies, but the path is level, pram-friendly, and shaded by holm oak—perfect for walking off lunch without breaking a sweat.

Keener boots can aim for the 12 km round to Turó de l’Home, the park’s highest summit. The trailhead at Collformic is 20 minutes by car or hourly bus; from there it’s a stiff 700 m climb through beech woods that turn copper in October. Allow five hours return and carry more water than you think sensible—Spanish way-marking assumes walkers are part camel.

Getting There, Getting Out

The town’s greatest asset is logistics. Leave the AP-7 at exit 11 and you’re parked by 12:30, lunch on the table at 13:00, back on the road by 15:00 with the Costa Brava beaches still only 40 minutes away. Trains run twice an hour from Barcelona Sants (50 min, €4.90); buy a T-10 3-zone card if you’re continuing to Blanes or Girona the same day. Station parking is free for the first two hours—long enough to wolf down a menu and grab celonins for the journey.

Overnight stays remain rare. There are two small hotels and a handful of B&Bs charging €60-80 for a double, perfectly pleasant but hardly destination accommodation. Most British visitors day-trip, combining lunch with outlet shopping at La Roca Village ten minutes down the road. The contrast is instructive: same motorway, different planet.

The Catch

Sant Celoni won’t dazzle anyone seeking postcard Spain. August afternoons are torpid, winter mist can trap diesel fumes over the high street, and the castle ruin is exactly that—a ruin, not a fairy-tale set. If you need cobbled perfection, drive on to Besalú or Pals. What the town offers instead is everyday Catalan life at half the price of the coast: market gossip, three-course lunches, forest trails you can tackle in trainers, and a train home when you’ve had enough.

Fill the tank, lock the car, follow the smell of grilled sausage. Just don’t tell the Costa Brava traffic—someone needs to keep the motorway moving.