Kings Cross to Catalonia | Spain by train

Not so very long ago I stood at a crossroads in Shanghai, eyeing the traffic lights. It was rush hour and a thousand cyclists were momentarily halted, pumped and raring to go. One false step on amber and “Brit Dies Horrible Death Under 2000 Wheels” would have made a neat story for the Mail. Today, in the blink of an eye, Shanghai has become Car City and China now represents the world’s largest automobile market. Meanwhile, in the UK, we’re headed the other way, discouraging cars in favour of Lycra-clad two-wheeled road warriors filming everything on their helmetcams. I may yet get my epitaph, but it will be in London, on YouTube.

Which partly explains why I’m happily sitting on the 8.31 Eurostar out of St Pancras International headed for Spain by train. Progress, or preposterous? It may seem unthinkable, in this age of fifty quid budget flights, to spend all day travelling to a resort that’s only two hours away via Easyjet, but change is upon us, people, and it’s European rail travel that’s now forging ahead as the greener way to go. London to Cologne in four hours is here. Non-stop Paris to Barcelona in six is too. I can carry what I want, I’m going city centre to city centre, nobody is going to ask me to take my shoes off, and I won’t be struggling to unwrap my airline “meal”. And I like the idea of breakfasting in London, lunching in Paris (at Le Train Bleu, a favourite Belle Epoque brasserie, up a sweeping staircase at Gare de Lyon), and arriving in Barcelona in time for dinner.

My decision to accompany lunch with a Cote du Rhone was a mistake – the onward journey became a blur. As I tried to watch the French countryside streak by from my 1st floor window (the trains are double deckers) I was repeatedly distracted by the Spanish couple over the aisle from me, who were in possession of the world’s best behaved baby, his occasional smiling gurgles signalling a gentle desire for food and cuddling. I have endured far too many tiny monsters on planes who like to alert you to the soreness of their ears by way of one piercing, never-ending scream.

Orwell would have had me down as an acolyte of the Duchess of Atholl who, along with other bourgeois English tourists, ignored the Civil War and insisted on continuing to take her annual holidays on the Spanish coast

I noticed little as we crossed 600 miles of French fields. Blame the wine, the baby or George Orwell. Homage to Catalonia is his book about signing up to the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and was engrossing for all the wrong reasons. He didn’t really have very much to do in terms of actual conflict, so there was plenty of time to write about how unpleasant the whole place was, how treacherous and class-ridden the Spanish were in the 1930s, and how his deprivations, illness, grumpiness and miserable demeanor would be the death of him. I read it the whole way and yet, undimmed by such cheerlessness, arrived at Barcelona-Sants station as fresh as a daisy and eager for dinner. Orwell would have had me down as an acolyte of the Duchess of Atholl who, along with other bourgeois English tourists, ignored the Civil War and insisted on continuing to take her annual holidays on the Spanish coast. Lickspittle that I am, by 9pm I was merrily ensconced in the bar of Botafumeiro, the city’s oldest, grandest seafood establishment, whose fresh anchovies, clams and spider crab are everyday fare for the lucky inhabitants of Vila de Gracia.

The following morning, rather than hang about Barcelona, I rented a car and headed in to the mountains. The most visible range as you travel north from the city is Montserrat, a sawtooth range of peaks best known for its Benedictine Abbey. From the ground you can just see, squinting, the edges of a building up near the clouds. This, we discovered some 20 minutes later, was only halfway. The actual retreat was much further, 4000 feet above sea level. We arrived into a coach park (full) then progressed to the car park (also full). The pilgrims, thousands of them, were up early.

Plan B: we headed over Catalonia’s low, undulating hills to Cardona, another, much more pleasing mountaintop destination. The Spanish government’s paradors – customarily distinguished old buildings repurposed for the modern age into hotels – work well in places like this. Here, a mountaintop castle has been minimally converted and through a warren of narrow corridors, thick walls and dark, velvet draped stairwells, your bedroom awaits, complete with flat screen TV and wifi.

Like its surrounding countryside, Cardona itself seemed completely deserted. At night, we wandered silently through medieval alleyways, under archways and along dark passages. We didn’t see a living soul and had a tiny local restaurant all to ourselves. The next morning, Cardona sprang to life: its bright weekly market, a riot of freshness and colour, spread out from the market square through all those alleyways and side streets. And because we were travelling by train, we were able to load up with oils and wines – glorious, glorious liquids in bottles of more than 100ml.

Our third mountaintop destination was Panta de Sau, in Osana County, a reservoir created 50 years ago in the mountains 70km from Barcelona, and a prime weekend bolthole for city families. The scenery is spectacular although the tourist board slogan “Spain’s Grand Canyon” is something of an exaggeration.

Up here the government built a new parador, at the end of a long twisting road that bobs and weaves through forests and farmland. The view from the bedroom balconies is the stuff of dreams. Distant cowbells tinkle, butterflies of every hue flutter hither and thither and eagles soar overhead (yes, all at once), while down on the water early morning mists drift in from between the surrounding peaks and burn off by 10am. Breakfast on a sunny terrace overlooking the water comprised pa amb tomaquet (toasted bread with fresh tomato and oil), sausage from nearby Fucimanya, and absolute silence. Which was as it should be. We were, after all, a very, very long way from home. C

Rail travel throughout Europe, including trips from London to Spain by train, can be found and booked at raileurope.com in the USA and voyages-sncf.com in Europe
The UK booking agency for Spain’s paradors can be found at keytel.co.uk