 Guest Post: Hiking El Camino de Santiago de Compostela Hikers in Spain will witness a diverse range of landscapes during their journey, from rugged mountainsides and luscious greenery to quaint villages dotted with whitewashed houses. Many people visiting Spain for a trek will opt to go hiking the Way of St James – an ancient pilgrimage with a fascinating history that is once again gaining in popularity. The beauty of this trek is that while all walkers must end up at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in the north west of Spain, there is no set route and therefore hikers can challenge themselves as little or as much as they like, and stop off at locations that suit their tastes. During medieval times, the Way of St James was once one of the most important Christian pilgrimage routes . . . → More Easy Hiking: Hiking The Way Of St James  Whereas the sea, all over the world, is made of one piece, mountains are nature’s true individuals. You have to meet them in person to properly know or even get a first meaningful impression of them. Statistical information of whatever sort or content is of no assistance here and can, at worst, be downright misleading. This, most emphatically, includes information about a mountain’s height. Height above sea level tells you very little about a mountain’s actual appearance. In certain mountain ranges of Germany, you can conquer a summit without actually knowing it. After a slight incline in the Rothaargebirge, for example, a sign informs you that you have just ascended the Langenberg, the highest peak in the federal state of North Rhine Westphalia. Clocking in at just under 900 meters, the gently curved and lushly green Langenberg, incidentally, is . . . → More Easy Hiking: Montjuic Is No Kilimanjaro  For once, Mrs. Easy Hiker and I are in total agreement: the most striking change that Barcelona has undergone since we last visited the city a mere twenty years ago is the rise in the number of people with an apparent interest in the works of (the architect) Antoni Gaudí. The Sagrada Familia was certainly a tourist attraction back in 1992, but I do not remember the queue stretching once around the block (I would never have gone in otherwise), and while people were already taking pictures of the Casa Batlló twenty years ago, they had to content themselves with outside views from the street level. Today, the whole place is a museum. Even Casa Mila – parts of which, I believe, are still used as residential flats – is now swarming with visitors on balconies and rooftops. . . . → More Easy Hiking: The Weirdest Thing About Parc Guell  Listen everybody: I have found my perfect easy hike! Now, if I were on a spiritual, Leonardo-di-Caprio-inspired quest to find “The Hike”, I could happily retire and lay down my quill (and my computer, too), leaving you in peace to find your own way around the best hiking trails in Europe. But I am not, so I guess I will be pestering you with advice for some time to come. And my advice for today is: if ever you are in Barcelona for more than a day or two, do not miss out on the Benedictine abbey of Montserrat on the foot of the Pyrenees. Montserrat rocks! It simply clicks all the right boxes: it is easily accessible, and once you step off the train, you are only a few metres away from the first trailhead. There are many different routes on offer . . . → More Easy Hiking: Montserrat Rocks  The most important job of any park, I have always felt, is to provide the “visitor” with an idea of what the city would have looked like if it had never been built. (A city’s inhabitants are visitors, too, they only stay longer.) Some cities do this outstandingly well (London, New York), others very poorly (Paris, for example – unless you are ready to believe that the Ile-de-France would naturally be full with cone-shaped bushes and square trees). All parks are landscaped, otherwise we would not call them “parks” but “jungles”. But it is the poorly designed parks that call attention to this. We condemn them in the spirit of the gentleman connoisseur who objects to poor breast jobs of the girls in his favourite magazines: it is not so much the fact that it has been done at all that scandalizes him . . . → More Easy Hiking: A Leisurely Hike In The Casa De Campo In Madrid | |
