Mountain views

Some debate over breakfast about today’s plans; in the end S, A and I headed off to Son, a village recommended by Tom and Rosa, while G went on a more strenuous walk later.

We drove to Son and then walked up to a “nature centre” a couple of kilometres out of the village. A nice shady walk through the woods, and then we came out into a meadow with a massive brutalist building, three car parks, and a Tesla charging point (in use). It turned out to be a mountain hostel with a 200-seater restaurant, an observatory, and a couple of classrooms. Extraordinary. It had a bar though, so we had coffee on the terrace before continuing across the meadows. There was no path as such, but a bonus was finding lovely fresh field mushrooms.

When we got back to Son, we had time to visit the very interesting interpretive centre about Romanesque churches in Pallars Sobira. S was chuffed because the guy explained everything to him in Catalan. Hence A and I didn’t understand most of it. But then we watched a 10-minute video with English subtitles. Upstairs there was a lovely exhibition of life in Son in the first half of the 20th century, with lots of old photos. All really well presented.

Then we visited Son’s Romanesque church (extra if the wifi will cope) which has some moderately interesting wall paintings. By then it was lunchtime, so on the way back we stopped at the lake at La Gingueta d’Aneu for bacon sandwiches while watching people canoeing and paddle boarding.

Walk stats: 4.6 km, 160 m climbing, 2 hours including the coffee stop. Not far, but we were all up for a lazy afternoon when we got back. The traditional storm arrived at 4; a little thunder and lightning and an impressive amount of rain — lovely!

Dinner: a starter of fried field mushrooms with garlic, more boeuf bourgignon, still delicious, and more pear cake.