For anyone who actually reads my blog and happens to be in possession of decent cognition and a functioning hippocampus, it would be well known that I have wanted to go to Montserrat since moving to Spain, and every single time I have schemed to do so, that pesky inversion has thwarted any attempt to do so. As for the hippocampus/cognition part, I have been ranting about sunny days on this side of the ridge turning into sheer crap on the other side the entire time.
Well, I decided that weather forecasts can shove it, and I am just going to have to fly to the ridge, and if I can see Montserrat, I’m going. A few days after the last flight, I went up, climbed over La Molina, and there she was! Even better, the inversion was in full force, though smashed down near the ground, creating quite a bit of resplendent beauty. It did take some visiting Dutch folks who walked into the hangar to propose the idea that the inversion “can be beautiful,” as I spat my venomous rancor about it to them in conversation some weeks prior to this flight. It turns out they were correct….
Montserrat, from La Molina, with the inversion that “can be beautiful.”
La Molina ski tracks.
Grazing terraces.
Puigllançada
Pre-Pyrenees
Pre-Pyrenees, with El Pedraforca, symbol of Catalonia.
Bergueda – The name is a “comarca,” which is the Catalonian equivalent (though not equal) of a county. Don’t forget my Landkreis rant from last year in Germany on the subject of regional naming subdivisions and taxonomy.
Avinyó. I can practically smell the desire for Catalonian independence…..
And the inversion. I suppose there is some beauty….maybe….
I count 4 parachutes.
Manresa – There are some real assholes that do not understand the concept of merging lanes here.
Hill north of Terrassa.
Montserrat!
Can you see the climbers?
Inversion, smashed down near the ground. I find the thought of flying into a windmill, in Spain, quite quixotic.
If a blog reader could explain the proliferation of abandoned and collapsing stone houses in Spain within reasonable range of expensive houses, jobs, infrastructure, and cities, I’d be grateful.
This is what happens when it rains on tilled soil.
Foothills of the Pre-Pyrenees.
Serra d’Ensija-els Rasos de Peguera. I am not that sophisticated…yet. I copied it from Google Maps.
El Pedraforca
Cadí-Moixeró
La Cerdanya – another comarca, though the name shows up for centuries as its own political subdivision in the eternal blood-filled historical ebb and flow of European governance.
Fields – had to do it.
