Raft or kayak a stretch of the Noguera Pallaresa from Sort

Walk up to the castle of the Counts of Pallars at the top of the town

Walk the old centre between the castle and the parish church, the former walled town

Sort is the capital of the Pallars Sobirà, strung along the Noguera Pallaresa, a river that rises beside the Garonne on the Pla de Beret and runs its whole course through the province of Lleida. In its upper reaches it is known for white water that is rafted and kayaked, and it runs straight through Sort. Above the old walled centre stands the castle of the Counts of Pallars, documented from the 13th century, though the town was tied to the counts from the 10th. The name looks like the Catalan word for luck, but it is older than that and probably means a bridge — the one important crossing of the river.

Sort: White Water on the Noguera Pallaresa

Walk out to the Estany de Sant Maurici and look across at Els Encantats, which is the park's logo

Find the meanders of the Sant Nicolau between Llong and Llebreta, which are what the park is named after

Work out how the meanders formed: a lake silted up flat and the river had nowhere to fall

Do a lake-to-lake day on the Carros de Foc refuge circuit, or a section of it

Work out that this is the only national park in Catalonia and why that is

Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici was created in 1955 and is the only national park in Catalonia — high Pyrenean granite scattered with almost two hundred lakes of Quaternary glacial origin. Between the Llong and Llebreta lakes the Sant Nicolau river runs in tight meanders across a flat where an old lake silted up, and those meanders — aigües tortes, twisted waters — give the park its name. The view across the Estany de Sant Maurici to the twin peaks of Els Encantats is the park's own logo.

Aigüestortes: Catalonia's Only National Park

Go into Sant Climent de Taüll, consecrated on 10 December 1123, and look at the apse

Work out that the Pantocrator you are looking at is a projection, and that the painting itself is in Barcelona

Find out why it was moved, and what the 1907 survey of this valley was trying to prevent

Look at the bell tower and notice it is attached to the church without being part of its structure

Walk or drive between the nine listed churches — they are close enough to do several in a day

Nine Romanesque churches in one Pyrenean valley went onto the UNESCO list together in 2000. Sant Climent de Taüll was consecrated on 10 December 1123 by the bishop of Roda; its six-storey bell tower stands against the building without being structurally part of it, and its apse Pantocrator is regarded as the high point of Catalan Romanesque painting. That fresco is not in the church — it is in the MNAC in Barcelona, where it was taken for safekeeping after the valley was surveyed in 1907. What is in the apse now is a projection of it.

The Vall de Boí: Nine Romanesque Churches in One Valley

Go into the cathedral, the only entirely Romanesque one left in Catalonia, and find the open gallery across the apse

Work out that the bishop of this town is a co-prince of Andorra and what that actually means

Drive or walk to a viewpoint on the Cadí wall and look along twenty kilometres of unbroken limestone

Find the Pedraforca and work out why a mountain with two prongs got that name

Look for chamois on the Cadí, which holds one of the densest populations in the Pyrenees

La Seu d'Urgell sits where the Valira meets the Segre below Andorra, and its bishop is still one of the two co-princes of Andorra — a head of state living in a Catalan market town. Its 12th-century cathedral is the only entirely Romanesque cathedral left in Catalonia and is unique there for how Italian it looks — a contract of 1175 gave one Ramon Llambard seven years to close the vaults and raise the towers, and he was probably Lombard, which is where the style came from. The church was never finished. East of the town the Cadí-Moixeró natural park runs along a limestone wall over twenty kilometres long, with the Pedraforca — a mountain split into two prongs — as its landmark, and one of the strongest chamois populations in the Pyrenees.

La Seu d'Urgell and the Cadí

Climb Pica d'Estats, at 3,143m the highest mountain in Catalonia, on the Spain–France border above the municipality of Alins; Henry Russell and Jean-Jacques Denjean made the first ascent in 1864

Stand on the neighbouring summits of the massif, Pic de Verdaguer (3,131m) and Punta Gabarró (3,115m)

Walk in the Alt Pirineu Natural Park, Catalonia's largest natural park at 69,850 hectares, created in 2003

Look for the Pyrenean chamois on the high slopes

Pica d'Estats is 3,143 metres and the highest point in Catalonia, standing right on the French border in the Pallars Sobirà — Henry Russell and Jean-Jacques Denjean made the first ascent in 1864, and Russell went on to become the great obsessive of the Pyrenees, eventually leasing a mountain. It is a long day from the valley with over 1,800 metres of ascent. Around it is the Alt Pirineu Natural Park, at 69,850 hectares the largest in Catalonia, created in 2003 and holding chamois, bearded vulture and a very small number of brown bears.

Pica d'Estats: The Roof of Catalonia

Find the Romanesque Christ of Mijaran inside the Church of Sant Miquèu, alongside its Gothic altarpiece

Find the fortified bell tower Ferdinand the Catholic ordered built in 1506 as a defensive symbol against France

Order a meal listing dishes in Aranese, the only place in the world where this Gascon-Occitan variety is an official language

Find the original Vielha tunnel entrance, opened in 1948 and now bypassed by the 2007 Túnel Juan Carlos I

The Val d'Aran is on the northern slope of the Pyrenees — the only comarca in Catalonia that drains largely into the Atlantic, down the Garonne, rather than the Mediterranean. Three languages are official in it: Spanish, Catalan, and Aranese, a variety of Gascon Occitan, which makes this the only place in the world where Occitan holds official status. Until the Vielha tunnel opened in 1948 the valley was cut off from the rest of Spain by snow for months at a time and its dealings were with France, which is why it kept its own language, its own law and its own institutions.

Vielha: Capital of a Hidden Valley

Start up the Riberot valley from the Pla de la Lau car park at Bordes-Uchentein, the one standard way in, and follow it towards the col de Faustin on the south side

Sleep at the refuge des Estagnous at 2,246 m, and if you have the gear and the head for a route graded D, take the via ferrata built in 2000 between the refuge and the étang Long — 1,200 m of it, 620 m equipped, hanging over the étang Rond

Reach the 2,839 m summit and find the cross standing there now, inaugurated in September 2012 after the granite one of 1987 was smashed by vandals in 2011 — the latest of a line that is said to start with the bishop Valerius and includes the marble cross Bernard Coignet de Marmiesse raised in the 1670s

Walk a stretch of the Chemin de la Liberté where it crosses the Valier massif, and from high ground pick out the line it takes from Saint-Girons towards the col de la Pale de la Clauère and over into Catalonia at Esterri d'Àneu — the way 782 people got out between 1940 and 1944

From the summit ridge look down the north-east flank onto the glacier d'Arcouzan, the most easterly glacier left in the Pyrenees — about 2.8 hectares in 2013, lying between 2,350 and 2,500 m

Mont Valier stands 2,839m over the Couserans in the Ariège and takes its name from Valerius, the legendary first bishop of Couserans, who the story says climbed it in the 5th century; a later bishop had a marble cross put up there in the 1670s. These same mountains carried the Chemin de la Liberté, the escape route named in 1994, over which 782 people got out to Spain between 1940 and 1944.

Mont Valier: The Ariège Summit and the Freedom Trail

Walk across Ronda's Puente Nuevo, built between 1751 and 1793 by José Martín de Aldehuela over the El Tajo gorge

Visit the Plaza de Toros de Ronda, built in 1784 and one of the oldest and best-preserved bullrings in Spain

Go down to the Arab baths below the old town, steam baths built on the Roman pattern

The pueblos blancos of the Serranía are whitewashed because lime kills the bugs and reflects the heat, and they sit on crags because that is where you put a town when the frontier between Christian and Muslim Spain ran through your valley for two hundred years. Ronda is split by the Tajo, a gorge a hundred metres deep, with the Puente Nuevo of 1751–1793 across it. Its bullring of 1784 is one of the oldest in Spain, and below the old town the Arab baths are the Muslims' adaptation of Roman ones — steam rooms rather than plunge pools.

Ronda: The Puente Nuevo Over the Tajo

Visit the Parc Astronòmic Montsec near Àger and observe through the observatory telescopes — the facility operates public observation sessions under some of the darkest certified Class 1 skies in Catalonia

Walk the Congost de Mont-rebei gorge — the Noguera Ribagorçana river cuts a 500m canyon through the Montsec range, accessible only on foot along a clifftop path with sections of fixed iron ladder

Look for griffon vultures nesting in the Montsec cliff faces — colonies of 80+ pairs nest in the gorge and ride thermals above the observatory plateau throughout the day

Visit Sant Miquel d'Àger collegiate church and photograph the Romanesque apse against the dark pre-Pyrenean sky at dusk

A Class 1 IDA Starlight Reserve — the highest designation — in the Catalan pre-Pyrenees, where a world-class dark sky observatory sits above a gorge accessible only on foot and griffon vultures nest in the canyon walls below