Walks and walking in and near Barcelona
Around Barcelona are a large number of natural parks and protected areas and the range of countryside from vineyards to meadows to rough mediterranean scrub and coastal areas means there is potentially a rich variety of walking possible.
If you are a regular walker there are good walks in and near Barcelona, but there isn't the rich network of walks that you might find in countries like the UK and even with maps it can be hard going to follow a trail.
The Generalitat publish guides to the parks, often with walks included but we have found that these often are A to B type walks in the middle of nowhere, so you need transport at both ends. Since we are getting by without a car, most of the described walks are all accessible by public transport.
The main walking area for Barcelona is the Collserola - the mountains of the Tibidabo beind the city. There is a good network of paths and routes and a long route called the Carrer de Aigues (Eagle walk) which runs across the hills looking over the city. It is certainly possible to take a train to Sant Cugat or Cerdanyola and walk back over the mountains. The main problem we always run into is the city side route to get off the hills. The paths down back into the city tend to be very steep and scrabbly and can be very overgrown. Most of our walks are from the back of the hills in towards BCN so we can catch a metro home.
Away from Barcelona are the Valles. The train routes run through the valleys around Montseny and the Sierra Litoral (the costal moutains behind the Maresme) so the routes from the train station tend to be up into the hills, then along, then back down to a different station. We also have some circular walks.
Our lesson has been to make sure you have a map, but only trust the main paths. Those marked with dotted lines tend to be overgrown, even where one of the GR (Grand Radonnee) paths goes dotted.
All our routes have been walked by our children (five upwards) who themselves are good walkers and can manage walks of up to 3 or 4 hours.
This section is being developed, but will contain walks we have found.
