From La Garrotxa, Catalonia
We were always going to take the detour. Why wouldn't we walk an extra 2km to visit a mysterious Romanesque chapel in a volcano crater?

Through the beech trees our trail wound until emerging on a sunny clearing, like a high mountain pasture. Only this was nothing of the kind. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims trod these paths for religious ends. For us, our pilgrimage led us to a picnic spot which will take some beating.

From Girona, Catalonia
Girona wears its identity with pride, unabashed by political declarations or a need to fall quietly in line. "Self-determination is a right, not a crime" I'm told again and again, in English and Catalan.

Just two weeks later, a Spanish court sentenced nine politicians to imprisonment for their role in the 2017 failed independence bid. Many are facing over a decade behind bars. Clearly, the authorities disagree with the sentiment.

From Girona, Catalonia
We stood beneath an old olive tree, stately and grey in a shaded patio. I could have sworn we were in the garden of some old country manor. Through a crumbling stone arch and rusting iron gate we found views off to green hills where a clutch of houses nestled. There were pert cypress trees in neat rows and pink snapdragon flowers pointing up to a big blue sky.

Somewhere below, out of sight and out of earshot, was a city. A city I rather like.

From La Garrotxa, Catalonia
Goretti and Roy run a rectory house-turned-B&B amid the forested volcanic cones of La Garrotxa. He the Scot, she the Catalan and she, not he, the Scotch whisky expert.

Goretti went out of her way to make us feel at home and fretted endlessly over my hand, swollen by an early morning feasting by the mosquitoes of Cap de Creus. Roy cooked up some of the best meals I've ever eaten in Spain, the pay off of a decade-long apprenticeship at Edinburgh's Balmoral.