Montserrat by bike

Some cool guy blessing my bike 

A bike trip I had had in mind for quite a while goes to the Benedictine abbey of Montserrat, an abbey being a monestry of a somehow higher rank within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

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The other day, I found a description for a circular route that starts in the village of Marganell, passes by the abbey, goes the whole way around Montserrat mountain and returns to Marganell - a route of almost 80km length. I decided to make use of the part between the village and the monastry only, but to start from home. From start to finish back home, that trip would be of 40km length. 

Route

I started on Sunday the 22nd, after dinner. The weather was ok, it was cold, but not too cold and I still had some sun. To be honest I wasn't sure I would make it to the monestry, for it already was a little late - typical Catalan Sunday family dinners being lengthy issues, but at least, so my thinking, I would be able to explore the better part of the route.

The long distance walking path denominated "GR4" led me to the vicinity of Marganell, but instead of entering the center of that village I followed another path by means of which I soon accessed a seperated settlement called Sant Cristòfol. From there, some uphill slopes on forest roads led me to the small monestry of Santa Cecilia. A country road I know well by car passes by Santa Cecilia, and it was that very road I had to follow for maybe 4 kilometers in order to reach the barrier that marks the entrance to the parking lot of Montserrat's main monastery. Since the parking lot is very stretched in length, I still had almost 2 km left in order to reach the monestry. A moment the security guards were occupied with other businesses, I slipped me and my bike through the abbey's first entrance gate into a kind of open air foyer. There, some nice tourist guy paid me favour and took a photo of me posing in front of the sacral building, just before the guards came back to sack me from my spot of holy earth.