Bona tarda! Another long but hugely rewarding and enjoyable day. Carpe kilómetro, you’ve got to make the most of every minute on the trail.

Today’s scores on the doors:
530m of up, 530m of down and 42.4km of along. Not bad for an old codger!

¡Salut!

🎶’Let’s have a drink, it’s Volcà Santa Margarida time …’🎶
I know what you’re thinking! ‘The dippy doctor’s been showing us all these so-called volcanoes but not a single crater. And you can’t have a volcano without a crater, can you?’
Chicas y chicas, here’s your thing! 😉

How the Garrotxa looked 11,500 years ago, the time of the last eruptions. These volcanoes are monogenetic, which means they won’t erupt again, but that doesn’t preclude future volcanic events in the area, which remains seismically active.

A big, fat and juicy* lava bomb within the finer-grained fallout deposits.

* Not the correct volcanological terminology, obvs.

The quarry scar has been landscaped and turned into a natural reserve so you can now see straight into the heart - or maybe womb - of the volcano, layers of scoriae, lapilli and occasional volcanic bombs, which last erupted only 11,500 years ago.

Oh man! This is a volcanologists seventh heaven! There’s a small but perfectly presented information centre at the foot of Volcà de Croscat.

At 788m, Volcà Croscat is the highest in the Garrotxa. The north-eastern flank was quarried for construction material until the 1980s when the local population protested that their landscape was being eaten away. This led to the creation of the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone.

Oratorio of the Day, La Garrotxa. Dedicated to Sant Ignasi de Loiola, who has his own Camino, which is on my list for 2025/26.

L’Església de la Santíssima Trinitat, Batet, La Garrotxa. It looks out of use but as I arrived the bells chimed for quarter to the hour.

Now that’s what I call Romanesque! Església de Santa Maria de Batet, La Garrotxa.

Of course, Jukes, the ‘adulation of biology’: the adoration of period pains, the worship of the menopause, the deification of endometriosis, the cult of cervical cancer. If only women could identify themselves out of their biologically-sexed bodies. Mate, you haven’t got a clue.

Volcà de les Bisaroques (525m). This defence tower, built during the Firsr Carlist War (1833-1840) overlooks the town of Olot. Feels like I’ve wandered into a chapter of ‘The Castle of Otranto’, it’s a very gothic landscape.

Església de San Cristòfol des Fonts, La Garrotxa. Of Romanic origin, founded in the eleventh century.

Don’t let the blue skies fool you, a chilly morning after overnight rain and a cool northerly airstream that will see snow return to the Pyrenees this week. Puigsacalm sporting an elegant plume of cloud around its summit, the Salt de Sallent, where I hiked yesterday, on the left.

Bon dia! Another day, another hike, it doesn’t get any better than this! It’s a little cooler today so I’m heading back into the beech woods of the Fageda d’en Jordà to explore the volcanic landscape.

As you can imagine, I’m a little bit hungry and VERY thirsty. Salut! Same again tomorrow?

Bona tarda! I got a bit greedy today! That’s 25.5 of your UK miles, and just one kilometre short of a marathon.

Salt de Sallent. A girt, humungous arena of precipitously perpendicular rock and an impressive waterfall after prolonged or intense rainfall.

And for those really stubborn, dirty and greasy nook and crannies that most timeline cleansers cannot reach …

Allow me to cleanse your timeline with some calming cascades …