The MOJO Family: Catalonia, Spain part 3 (Olot and Ribes de Freser)

Olot and Ribes de Freser, Catalonia, Spain

Our family continued our tour of the Catalonia region by going to Olot. Olot is a town with red roofed buildings, and lush green vegetation growing over the rounded mounds of old volcanoes. It’s in the foothills of the Pyrenees, but not too high in altitude, and quite warm in May. It's a pleasant little town of 35,000 people.

We had time to enjoy this little town and were able to do quite a bit of work and school as well. There’s an old town with narrow streets, a river going through town. It felt like there were less tourists and more ‘real life’ working people around.

The view out the front of our apartment

Hanging our laundry out the back of our apartment

walking up an old volcano to a crater

Old town, Olot

There is a beautiful walking/biking path called ‘the greenway’ that goes all the way to Girona along an old railway. We rented bikes for the day as a family and rode to another village for lunch and then rode home. It was delightful to be out in the sun, with green fields and hills around us, enjoying our time together. The kids did an amazing job of biking nearly 50km total with one really big climb in each direction!

Patio lunch

My niece arrived to join us for the remainder of the trip. She was flying standby and we weren’t actually quite sure what day she would arrive, and were pleasantly surprised to have her fly into Barcelona on the earlier side of the options. That meant she got to spend her first two nights of Europe in the little town of Olot after Jason and Rachel traveled to Barcelona to pick her up from the airport. They brought a rental car back with them in order to make this work out, so our days on the bus were done.

We enjoyed the open air tents of the produce market, a volcano museum that is actually housed inside a crater, and we walked up the hill into another old crater that has a chapel beside it with lovely views.

The old bullring is now a performing arts center

A 100% gluten-free bakery for my neice, who happens to have celiac's disease,
allowed her to eat a baguette for the very first time!

When we let Olot, we drove through some smaller winding mountain highways to the town of Ribes de Freser via Ripoll. Ripoll is the 'bigger' town with a population of 11,000 people. It has a beautiful old monastery and cloister, so we checked that out.

The entrance to the monastery is called 'the bible of stone'
as it has so many biblical stories carved into it

Inside the monastery

This is the burial place of "Wilfred the Harry'' ... which we all found hilarious
It turns out he '...had hair in unusual places for a man..." and
he had an acquantaince named 'Charles the Bald'

The crypt and sarcophagi underneath the church

Cloister

A beautiful old bridge just North of Ripoll

Ribes de Freser

Our destination was the little town of Ribes de Freser. In the Eastern Spanish Pyrenees, this little mountain town of <2000 people is a charming place. We were there because Jason signed up for the 'Els Bastions' 71km mountain ultra. This race, for Jason, was a way to have a great time playing in the mountains, but also great training and some altitude practice for his upcoming 100mile HardRock ultra event in July in Colorado.

Our host in Ribes de Freser was a previous racer and gave us a great run down of the race course, as well as ways we could go hike and scout beautiful sections of the course. The weather when we arrived was quite lovely, so we had some awesome hiking and views of the alpine. Jason, Teagan and Rachel hiked up to a high summit very close to the French border and on snow. The next day, we hiked to a differed area and got to see marmots, sheep/goats/chamois, and some snow.

Teagan's first time in the alpine

The summit with snow is visible behind Jason as he takes off running to climb up to it.

Ava and I had our own version of this adventure, but didn't go quite as high

Jason running back down

Course markings

Making dinner in our lovely little kitchen

Course markings

Sheep and chamois are in this field

Marmots

A crepe food truck happened to be quite close to our place

Old town Ribes de Freser

Prior to the race, the organization gave shorter route options as the weather wasn't looking good. Jason was totally prepared for cold, wet mountain running and the mandatory gear list was significant. However, the race was shortened from 71km to approx 50km and took out some of the high ridge sections that Jason had been looking forward to.

On race day in the morning, we heard it was snowing up higher. We watched Jason at the 7am start, and then the four of us girls and all of our layers/snacks/water caught the train (rack railway) up the Valley of Nuria to the little lodge and lake of Nuria to await Jason. It was snowing and we were excited. We were able to explore some museum exhibits about the railway, an old large monastery with beautiful stain glass, and a smaller stone chapel. (I even made an offering to Saint Catherine asking to keep Jason safe during the event.) Ava had a ball making some snow people, but the rest of us were pretty grateful that the aid station was inside a hall with good shelter from the increasing snow and wind.

Jason ran well and felt good, coming in to the aid station in a good place and in good health and spirits. But he was told that the race was now officially cancled and he could not continue on the race course as it was too dangerous. He could either catch the train back down or turn around and run back to town the way he came up (on his own responsibility). So we caught the train back down and he turned around, ran back along the course route, and ran all the way to the finish. He ended up running 40km and had a good training day with some elevation, some technical stuff, some weather training, and some good vertical. He had a good time!