This is a private trip with mainly private tours where these are included. The Gaudí night visit will be shared with other visitors, but we promise they won't bite.

The simplest way is to fly into Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN) and out of Girona (GRO), though it's also easy to fly back from Barcelona with a short train ride.

But we'd also love you to consider going one or both ways by train.

From London St Pancras you can be in Paris within a couple of hours, and from there, it's a six-hour ride through the French countryside and across the Pyrenees to reach Barcelona. Whilst it can be done in a day in either direction, we find it nicer to stay a night or two in Paris if you can, and we work with a lovely hotel right by the Gare de Lyon station to make life easy.

Equally, you can do it on the way back by boarding at Girona.

If you'd like to know more or discuss ideas, just let us know when you send an enquiry.

The best months for this trip are April through June and September through early November.

Spring and autumn/fall are just gorgeous times to come. If you're heading down the Costa Brava and passing the Aiguamolls wetlands, then spring and early September are when there are more birds in town. The grape harvest tends to be early in September, whilst the beech forests of Garrotxa are glorious in October as the leaves turn golden.

Given that this trip is designed to have you out walking and exploring, we tend to advise you give the height of summer and depths of winter a bit of a wide berth. It's too hot and busy in July and August, a bit too chilly in the winter. Rainfall is consistently quite low - too low actually as Catalonia is regularly experiencing long droughts - but the coast in particular has a bit of an 'out of season' feel in winter and it loses a lot of its buzz.

The hotels you will stay at on this trip tend more towards the premium end of the scale. That's not to say they're fancy for the sake of being fancy, but rather we know you'll have a warm welcome, a big comfy bed, a great location and a bit of peace and quiet too. We even throw in an inviting pool or some top-notch cooking along the way.

This is very much a trip designed to have you out and about, exploring on foot. In between the more active days, you tend to have easy rest days as you move between destinations.

In the Pyrenees, you have a day with your guide where you are able to set the level of difficulty. There are options for easy, medium and difficult hikes, you simply chat through the options with your guide.

In Garrotxa we advise you to do the circular walk from your hotel. It's a decent walk at 11km but importantly it's pretty flat, so it's a fairly easy one.

On the coast, the walks are shorter and tend to lead downhill steadily. There's usually a quiet cove or two to swim in on the way if the sun is shining on you.

All in all, this is a comfortably active trip, but you always have the option of changing plans and using your car to explore instead.

Once you get out of Barcelona, which you'll do pretty quickly, the roads tend to fall quiet and traffic is usually very light. We love driving in Spain because of the freedom it gives you. That could mean changing plans over breakfast, or simply pulling over at the side of the road to soak in a view you might otherwise have sailed straight past.

As the roads are generally quiet, smooth and scenic, it's designed to be a pleasurable part of the experience, rather than a price to pay for said freedom.

Some vehicles have sat nav built in, but we find the best way to navigate is simply to use Waze or Google Maps on your smartphone. These can both be used offline to avoid data charges and your phone can easily sync with your car's Bluetooth so that it talks to you through the radio. All in all, it's not really much different to navigating in a part of your own country you've not been to before.

That's very much the idea yes. Beyond the time you spend with your local hosts and guides, the spirit of this trip is very much one of discovery and so we assume you'll enjoy striking up conversations with the locals as you go. The places you visit offer a good balance between being well-established enough as tourism destinations to be able to communicate in English, and small/away from the crowds enough to necessitate a bit of 'Spanglish' to get by. It's all good fun and all very authentic in our experience.

No, though you'll find that Catalan is actually the lingua franca in these parts. In Barcelona, you'll be just fine. The only time you might struggle is if you go to a proper neighbourhood restaurant away from the tourist centre (there's a good one by Sants station). The language might be in Catalan only, though everyone speaks Spanish so if you've got some of that, this would be the time to use it.

In the countryside, in smaller restaurants and villages, English is rarely spoken. But most of the time you will be with your hosts, who will speak excellent English, and so aside from the occasional pointing and gesturing, again you'll have no problems. Part of the charm is going to places where English is not the dominant language in our experience.

We can tailor the trip in certain ways, making sure that we retain the essence of this holiday through the pacing and content. We're always happy to work within your timeframes, so if you have two weeks for your travels, we can discuss which parts to take out. Equally, if you have more time then there's always more to explore, be it Madrid or Andalucía.