Today we had an interesting outing to Montserrat, a famous abbey high in the hills behind Barcelona. It is about an hour by train, followed by another hour or so queueing for the aerial cableway ride up to the abbey. We were surprised at the top to find a complete town, with hotels and restaurants, and plenty of tourists. There is also a modern cog railway, which provides the other popular route up and down, and two additional cable cars for travel up and down from Montserrat to nearby points of interest. Finally there is even a road, which we had not realised. So Montserrat is much more connected to the outside world than those clifftop-dwelling monks in Greece.
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| Catching the R5 regional train for the one hour trip to near Montserrat. |
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| The little yellow gondola carried us up to the monastery, which is just visible on then horizon above. |
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| Montserrat is actually a small town, with roads, hotels, and restaurants. |
After a lunch at the crowded lunch bar, we boarded the Saint Joan funicular which climbs steeply up from the town. At the top you can choose from a variety of tracks to suit all levels of fitness. We tackled the one hour walk up to Santa Magdalena.
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| The view of Montserrat from above, aboard the precipitous funicular. |
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| One of the shrines along the path up to Santa Magdelena. |
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| Look, there's the summit! |
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| Resting at the top, above 1000 m, looking out to Barcelona and the sea, 40 km away. |
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| Had a beautiful day for it! Not to be taken for granted. |
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| The path deteriorated into a narrow goat track towards the top. |
Back down at the town we bought tickets to tour the basilica, including the "Black Madonna". Then icecreams.
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| The famous Black Madonna, which believers queue to touch. |
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| A long wall of devotional candles outside the basilica. |
At the end of the day we caught the cog railway train back down to the floor of the valley, where we waited on the crowded platform for the R5 train back to Barcelona. That was an uncomfortable journey as the carriage was packed with people, and we had to stand on our (old, tired) feet the whole way!
All in all we enjoyed the outing to Monserrat, and the climb to the top of the mountain. The weather was perfect for that day.
