Hiking for beginners

To those fond of hiking, trekking, roaming through the countryside or just curious about discovering new walking routes in and around Tarragona: where to start?

The following editorials have published a whole series of Catalan- or Spanish-language guides useful for exploring the region either walking, biking or driving: Cossetania (Azimut collection); Piolet; Prames. Their websites allow you to order guides online. If you have access to a local library in Catalonia, then you will easily find any of these guides on the shelves. Personally, I find Rafael López-Monné´s series of walks and excursions (entitled ´A peu per les comarques de Tarragona´) - published by Arola Editors and now in 5 handy booklets - the best introduction to hiking and discovering fascinating new places in the amazingly diverse countryside and mountains of the Tarragona province.

Finding English-language guides (or French, German or Dutch-language guides) is slightly more difficult. If Spanish or Catalan is not (yet) your cup of tea, a useful introduction are the rural tourism pages in the family tourism guide (with lists of lots of relevant websites) and the car itinerary booklet published by the Provincial Tourist Office. You can download these booklets (and also order them for free online) on this website. On another page of the Provincial Tourist Office you can order for free online or download a range of other English-language (as well as French and German) booklets that may be useful as well as a map of the province. The hiking brochure they publish now seems to be out of stock - try the website just to see if you can get hold of it.

For professional hikers, thé websites to go are the one of the FEEC - the Catalan federation of ramblers´ and mountaineering associations - and the English-language site of the Catalan Hiking Association.

On these two websites you´ll find lots of information about all the long footpaths (´senders de gran recorregut´ - or in short, GR) - the red-and-white-marked foothpaths of over 50km - and about all the short foothpaths (´senders de petit recorregut´ - or in short, PR) - the yellow-and-white-marked foothpaths of between 10 and 50km. Information about the foothpaths and of course also about mountain refuges, campings, hostals, local ramblers´ associations and a great deal more. On the last website you can buy online route guides in English, which come with maps, for all of the GR paths (you can buy a guide to the entire path or to 10 to 20 km sections of the path) and guides and maps for all of the PR paths. Of the other publishers of maps, the ones worth mentioning are Piolet (with a series of very detailed maps of, e.g., Montsant, Els Ports, the Prades mountains, the Poblet woodlands and Siurana) and the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya which publishes topographical maps of all the comarcas on a scale of 1:50.000.

This just to get you started!

Tarraco´s blessed mountains

The Tarragona province has a number of exceptional mountain ranges such as the massifs of Montsant and els Ports which are natural parks. The Poblet woodland, part of the mountains of Prades, is also a protected area with the status of natural area of national interest.

The Montsant natural park (see top picture) lies in the north of the Priorat comarca and is the natural park closest to those holidaying on the Costa Dorada. The ´Holy Mountain´ (which is what Montsant means literally) has historically been a place of spirituality and transcendence, of hidden-away Romanesque chapels and hermitages and of course also home to the oldest Carthusian monastery - Scala Dei or ´God´s Stairway´ - south of the Pyrenees. Even the Muslims (who occupied this land for centuries) called it the ´blessed mountain´. The whole world knows about the Priorat and Montsant wines, some also know about the beauty of the vine-covered slate hills, but far fewer know about the stunningly imposing blocks of conglomerate rock, chasms, caves, gorges and grottoes of the 9,200 hectares of the Montsant natural park. Like els Ports, the Montsant mountain is difficult to access: no vehicles can get here.

The els Ports natural park is probably one of Spain´s wildest - and least-known - mountains, with its deep rugged ravines and its herds of wild mountain goats (which have barely survived anywhere else). Eagles, vultures and falcons are some of the other animal species seen in els Ports. This is a park of over 35,000 hectares, extending into Aragon and Valencia.

The Poblet woodland, on the northern slopes of the Prades mountains, is about a quarter of the size of the Montsant park. These woods (see picture below) were historically part of the property portfolio of the famous Poblet monastery, Spain´s most important Cistercian monastery. This is a dense, leafy wood at great altitude, a refuge of trees and species unusual for these latitudes so close to the Mediterranean, with lots of wildlife, including the wild boar and the peregrine falcon, and a growing network of hiking and biking trails.

It is said that on a clear day, at the summit of the 1,202 metre-high La Baltasana, one can see the els Ports mountains in the south and the Pyrenees in the north.

To allow us to discover these areas we should give credit to the first generation of hikers who have mapped often long-forgotten footpaths, cart tracks and trails of cattle herders, wood choppers and charcoal makers.

The Land of Hazelnuts

An unmistakeable marker in the landscape of Tarragona and its surrounding comarcas (portrayed above in an early 20th-century painting by Joaquin Mir, a lover of the local landscape in and around l´Aleixar and Alforja) is the hazelnut plantation. An amazing 90% (!) of all Spanish-grown hazelnuts are produced on the small hazelnuts farms - thousands of them - of this region, especially in the Camp de Tarragona lowlands. A 600-year old tradition, hazelnut cultivation spread by the late 19th century to replace the vineyards wiped out by the great wine blight. Now there is another blight sweeping the region: Turkish competition. The biggest world producer of hazelnuts is flooding nowadays even the Spanish domestic market, so local growers have been working hard on raising the quality of their product. The first major step in this direction was the creation in 1995 of the DOP Avellanes de Reus (Denominación de Origen Protegida - or, in English, Protected designation of Origin); worldwide there is just one other hazelnut-producing region that has this same quality label.

The nutritional and health benefits of hazelnuts have been demon-

strated by several scientific studies: it is a source of protein, carbohydrates, vitamin E, antioxidants, minerals and a fat content that is primarily oleic acid. Most hazelnuts end up in the confectionery industry - worth mentioning is turrón, an ancient and artisanal nougat that comes in many varieties. But the gastronomy of hazelnut goes far beyond confectionery, sweet deserts (like hazelnut cream) and the well-known hazelnut romesco sauce. Top restaurants in the region like Falset´s Celler de l´Aspic or La Gigantea in La Selva del Camp offer dishes such as langoustine salad with hazelnuts and green Benac tomatoes or with hazelnut bread and aubergine mousse. Step into any of the region´s better agrobotigas or farm shops - usually in villages with an active cooperative - and you´ll find a range a hazelnut-derived produce: hazelnut spread (puré de avellanas tostadas); hazelnut oil (e.g. from Reus-based Afruse S.L.) - sold both as an edible oil great for adding flavour to a dish and as an essential oil for aromatherapy and massage -; hazelnut horchata which is a creamy, refreshing drink that can be served as an aperitive; etc.

Now a new quality label has been introduced under the name of ´Productes Locals de Qualitat - Camp de Tarragona i Terres de l´Ebre´ (PLQ, in short), bringing together not just hazelnuts (DOP Reus) and quality wines and oils but also peaches (IGP Ribera), bluefish (MQ Peix Blau), rice (DOP Delta de l ´Ebre), clementines (IGP Terres de l ´Ebre), potatoes (IGP Prades), calçots (IGP Valls) and honey (Perrellò). No better place to start sampling these gastronomic goodies than in one of the many fairs that are celebrated year-round in the region. The small village of Riudoms near Reus will soon - during the second weekend of August - celebrate its annual Hazelnut Fair, the meeting point for all local hazelnut fanatics.

Poblet and Mount Athos: spiritual twins

Spirituality is definitely back on the agenda of the 21st century. Even the old (and especially the oldest) monasteries are creeping into the newspaper headlines. Which brings me to the Delos Initiative whose agenda is to help secure the sanctity and biodiversity of sacred natural sites in developed countries across the world. Sprung from the World Commission on Protected Areas of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) - one of the world´s biggest environmental organizations and lobbies - the Delos Initiative has so far selected 27 sacred natural sites: 1 in Australia, 1 in Bulgaria, 2 in Finland, 3 in Greece (inclsuing the Athos Peninsula), 1 in Israel, 2 in Italy, 2 in Japan, 1 in Morocco, 2 in Romania, 1 in Russia, 1 in South Africa, 1 in South Korea, 2 in the US, 2 in the UK (Arran Island Marine Reserve and Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve) and five (!) in Spain. Coincidence? Spain has plenty sites that would qualify. Among those selected so far four (! - again) are based in Catalonia: Poblet Monastery, Montsant, Montserrat and the (Buddhist) Tashi Ling Monastery in the Park of Garraf.

The idea behind the Delos Initiative is to investigate and learn from the relationship between, e.g., Poblet Monastery and its surrounding landscape - a protected nature reserve with different types of Mediterranean forests and vineyards in the lowlands. It is all about re-valuing the spirituality of nature reserves and about recognizing the traditions, know-how and skills of the ancestral custodians of nature such as the monastic communities. In the words of Josep Maria Mallarach, geologist and environmental consultant, "the protection of natural sites is a very recent phenomenon, whereas the concept of sacralization of nature stems from remote times...when national parks managers only take into consideration material values and devalue non-material ones, the spiritual foundation that has kept these landscapes intact is being undervalued". Wise words. A series of concrete proposals and projects exploiting the synergies between Poblet and its woodland-cum-vineyard landscape are in the pipeline - I´ll keep you posted!

For more on this initiative see: www.med-ina.org/delos/sites.htm

Wind farms

Southern Catalonia is home to a growing number of wind farms dotting the landscape, 17 at the moment. One example is the wind farm of Trucafort, on the Mola de Colldejou, part of the mountain range separating the Baix Camp from the Priorat. Ninety-one giants of 50 metres high. Follow the T322 leading from Colldejou to Torre de Fontaubella and halfway (between km 17 and 18) you´ll find a private road leading all the way up to the wind turbines. Clean energy and spectacular to watch but in some cases also extremely controversial because of its damage to local ecosystems and its impact on a virgin mountainscape. Sea wind farms are the future...

Landscapes

Nature, nature parks and landscapes are finally more and more appreciated now as a huge asset in this part of Catalonia. Still, the great writers, poets and photographers who have immortalized these natural treasures have not really caught the imagination yet of the outsider. What of the great stories and myths that inhabit these landscapes? You´ll look in vain in the official brochures. I don´t think anyone can deny that the hills and mountains of the Montsant range, the Prades mountains, the Poblet woodlands, the Gaià valley or the vine-clad terraces of the Priorat are the stuff of artists and writers. The legends of the sacred mountain of southern Catalonia (Montsant), the painters of the Terra Alta and the epic image of the canyons of the Els Ports natural park are waiting to be fully discovered by the foreign visitor.