‘Seduced by a dramatic landscape of canyons and lakes’: exploring Catalonia’s wild side

A historic single-track train line through the foothills of the Pyrenees opens up a pristine wilderness of forests, gorges and thundering rivers Alighting at the train station of Santa Linya in northern Spain, I paused to wonder what the railway engineers were thinking.

A rough halt hewn out of the mountainside, with no ticket office, no waiting room, no sign of human habitation – just a single platform in the wilderness. On the far side of the track, a shimmering turquoise lake flanked by pine forests. Ahead – the only way out – a rocky trail snaking up the limestone cliff. My husband and I had first strayed into this western corner of Catalonia – Pallars Jussà – on our honeymoon road trip 21 years earlier. Seduced by its dramatic landscape of canyons, lakes, crumbling…