Montserrat: Barcelona’s Epic Mountain Escape

In this episode, I take you beyond the monastery and into the wild side of Montserrat—by e-bike and on foot. This is my first time exploring Spain’s most iconic mountain, and I turned it into a multisport adventure of ebiking through vineyards and hiking the iconic trails.

I wanted to see if Montserrat could be more than just a tourist stop—and honestly? It delivered in some ways, and disappointed in others. Hear my take on what parts of Montserrat are worth it for hiking—and which trails I’d skip next time.

📍 AllTrails Map https://alltrails.pxf.io/spain-montserrat

🥾 What to Watch Next:
https://youtu.be/2ENaKdvR6ZE
https://youtu.be/EBKRHFL9qYA

💡 Don’t miss the upcoming episodes where I break down the best hikes, funiculars, and restaurants in the region.

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[Music] [Applause] [Music] I’m on location today in the Monserat mountains of Spain, right along the southern coast. And this is only about 45 minutes away from Barcelona. One of the reasons why I wanted to come to this region is one, obviously the mountains are magnificent, unlike any other kind of mountains I’ve seen where you actually see this rock that’s all jumbled and garbled together, not just like a pure limestone. It creates these beautiful formations of tumbled towers behind me. But not only that, you get to experience being in the midst of olive groves, vineyards that span for miles. And one of the reasons why I love this region in addition to the landscape is that when you aren’t traveling, a lot of times travel’s just going to be focused in between cities. But for you and I, explorers like us love the hidden gems. So I like to find not only the places that are off the beaten path, but where are the places you can access really easily? You can get to this region by car, which is what I’ve done, but you can also get to it by bus or train really easily just outside of the city, and you feel like you are a world away. One of the other things I love to do and why I’m doing a little bit of recon on location for the show and also to figure out where are some of the hidden trails is how can you experience the same location in multiple ways. So what you see behind me are all of these amazing groves of olive trees. But then way up in the distance you see the whole span of mountains that goes on for kilometers. This is the western region of the range. So where we are right now is close to an infamous monastery that a lot of people come to visit just outside of Barcelona. But a lot of times what they miss is there is a whole range of hiking and mountain biking trails all across this entire region. So this is a bit of a recon not just for the trails but doing it more like a multiport adventure. So long as you avoid local pedestrians and cars that are driving through locals you don’t want to make sure that you’re getting in their way while doing something like this. So, over the past couple of days, I’ve been checking out some of the different hiking trails in the region on the western end, which is very different than the hiking on the eastern end. And then today is an ebiking adventure. My goal for you in doing this is to be able to do a couple of things. One, show you how epic the landscapes are in this area. And knowing that Europe is one of my most favorite places to hike, I love to find these different locations that are easy to get to, but I’m also learning a lot along the way. So, the western region of the Monzerat mountains looks very similar in terms of like topography, but a lot of the hikes I’m finding are either going to take you into dense forests where you’re not going to get the satisfying epic views that you often times get when you’re hiking in other mountain ranges, but you’re also dealing with a lot of scrambling. And I have to tell you, it was really one of my most least favorite hikes that I have ever experienced because it was so easy to get off trail. The signage was not great. We were in dense forest for several kilometers and it was the one trail where I got so off map that we didn’t even finish the entire loop. But I learned a lot along the way on how to use tools like all trails more efficiently that I’m going to share with you in an upcoming episode. But because this is all about field notes, we’re going to talk a little bit more about some of the other things I’ve learned. Where you want to go to hike in this region is not on the western end, unless you like scrambling. You want to be on the eastern end where the monastery is because what I’m going to show you coming up in an episode is you’re going to arrive not only in this beautiful monastery that’s existed for centuries, but you’re going to experience an entire finicular system that you can get up from Barcelona up into higher trails. So if you want to ascend and summit some of the mountains behind me, the most infamous one is St. Jeron, you can do just that. But you can also take finiculars right at the base of the monastery that will take you a couple hundred meters up or a couple hundred meters down to save some of the elevation gain. But not only that, it’s going to help dive you in to this entire trail system that you wouldn’t even know existed looking at this from the ground level. What I love about the trails in this region, as you can tell, it’s super windy here right now today. What I love about the trails in this region is that not only are you hiking along the beautiful mountains much, much higher up than where I am right now, but you get the opportunity to also go along historical religious landmarks, which is absolutely stunning. When you immerse yourself in a really beautiful landscape, sometimes it’s just about the land and seeing different terrain. But when you can immerse yourself where you see history in the buildings, the architecture, all of the different trials and tribulations that happened in an area, the different statues and figures and architecture that’s lasted for centuries, it’s a pretty incredible thing cuz it doesn’t always happen on hikes, especially hiking in North America. Europe, it’s a lot more popular. So, I have so much to share with you on how to hike in these different regions, what I’ve learned, what to do differently, and you’re going to become so much more savvy at how to use all trails. But not only that, this is also a multiport adventure, which is one of the things I love to do. If you’ve checked out some of my other playlists in the Dolommites or Southern Utah, if you haven’t checked that, check those out because if you really want to experience a region when you can experience the same place multiple ways, that’s where I think it’s really powerful. We’ve already been up there hiking in the terrain. So now ebiking amongst all of these vineyards, being at the base of the mountains and experiencing the beautiful European culture where not only are you covering a lot of miles based on whatever hiking or biking that you want to do, you get to experience delicious food along the way. So part of the recon today is going to be scoping out a little restaurant that’s supposed to have some of the m most best famous paella in the region. And if we’re in Spain, one of the things we’ve got to eat is paella. So I’m excited to share all of that with you. We’re going to be hiking. We’re going to be ebiking. We’re going to be making mistakes. And we’re going to be eating our faces off. The amount of bread I have had in the past 4 days in Spain is insane. So, I can’t wait though. I’m going for all of it. So, this is Jen on the field out here in the Monzerat mountain region of Spain. A little teaser of what’s coming up for you in the next season of Explore This. We have so much many adventures coming ahead. I cannot wait to share them all with you. I’ll see you out on the trail. Hey, thanks so much for watching today’s episode. Take a second and like this video, then subscribe to explore this so you can get notified on when the next episodes come out where we’re going to be seeking adventure, tasting the world, and discovering everything. So excited to have you with me. I’m your host, Jenna Hana, and I will see you next time.