Self-guided walking holidays - they give you a sense of adventure but with help always just a call away, and social distancing is built in
- Self-guided walks, such as in Spain’s mountainous and thinly populated Priorat region, are perfect during the pandemic – social distancing is not an issue
- Typically cheaper than guided tours, they take you off the beaten track with the option of easy or hard routes, while your luggage goes on ahead
The broad track winds gently down through a forest of cypress and pine, with hand-grenade-sized cones underfoot. There’s an occasional boot print to be seen, but no sign of boot-wearers, and indeed I haven’t glimpsed another human since setting off from Poblet Monastery, in the Priorat region, an hour’s train journey and short taxi ride west of Barcelona, Spain.
Some tracks are too tiny to be mapped and numbered in federal or regional systems, although occasional marks on path-side rocks are reassuring. The very detailed written notes provided by self-guided walk specialists On Foot Holidays, and now slung around my neck in the transparent waterproof folder provided, are my main guide.
The track comes to a crossroads with a lesser path. It’s entirely obvious which is the right way to go, but just as cryptic crossword puzzle enthusiasts gradually become familiar with the minds of particular setters, so I’m starting to understand the thinking of On Foot’s local resident, Joanna Thomas, who devised this El Priorat walk.
If the onward direction looks obvious, then it definitely isn’t the right way. And I now see there’s a faint thread of an additional path tumbling steeply downhill at an angle. The notes confirm this is indeed the right direction, as does a guilty look at downloaded maps in a GPS app on my phone just to make sure that I’m not about to get lost, and that I’m not lost already.