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

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

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

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 up to the Renclusa and look at what is left of the Aneto glacier from below

Find out how much ice the Maladeta massif has lost in the last hundred years

Climb Aneto with a guide if you are equipped for it — 3,404 metres and the highest in the Pyrenees

Walk the Estós or Vallibierna valleys if you are not, which get you into the same country on foot

Work out why this one valley has more three-thousand-metre peaks around it than any other in the range

The Benasque valley holds the highest ground in the Pyrenees: Aneto at 3,404 metres, the highest peak in the range, with Posets and Maladeta behind it, and the Aneto glacier — what is left of it — on the north face. The Maladeta massif has lost most of its ice in a century, and what remains is one of the clearest things in Spain to point at when talking about what is happening to mountain glaciers. Benasque itself is the base for all of it, and the Posets-Maladeta natural park has more three-thousand-metre peaks than anywhere else in the Pyrenees.

Benasque: The Roof of the Pyrenees

Go into the cathedral and work out that a village of a few dozen people once had its own diocese, for 193 years and fifteen bishops

Go down into the crypts under the three apses, finished early in the 12th century

Find the Romanesque portal and read its carved capitals, which run from the Annunciation to the apocalyptic dragon

Find out that the scriptorium here was copying Plautus, Terence and Horace, and work out what that says about the place

Look out from the terrace at the Isábena valley and the Pyrenees behind it

The first cathedral here was consecrated on 30 November 956 under the counts of Ribagorza, and in 1006 Abd al-Malik, son of Almanzor, burned it along with the rest of the county. It was rebuilt under Sancho III the Great, and its scriptorium was busy enough to be copying Plautus, Terence and the Epistles of Horace. The three naves and the crypts under the three apses were finished early in the 12th century. The diocese lasted 193 years and fifteen bishops, among them San Ramón de Roda and Ramiro II the Monk, cleric and king of Aragon. The village that is left has a few dozen people. The village sits above the Isábena with the Pyrenees behind.

Roda de Isábena: The Smallest Cathedral Village in Spain

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

Cross the fortified bridge over the Fluvià and notice that it changes direction partway across

Go down into the mikveh, the Jewish ritual bath, which is one of very few left standing in Europe

Find the monastery church of Sant Pere and the old pilgrims' hospital of Sant Julià

Work out the political story: capital of its own county from 902, absorbed into Barcelona in 1111, and frozen afterwards

Find the Casa Cornellà, one of the best-preserved Romanesque civil buildings in Catalonia

Besalú became the capital of an independent county after Wilfred the Hairy died in 902, and lost that status in 1111 when Bernat III died without an heir and the county passed to the house of Barcelona. What is left is an unusually intact medieval town: the angled fortified bridge over the Fluvià, the monastery church of Sant Pere, the old pilgrims' hospital of Sant Julià, the Casa Cornellà, and — the rarest thing here — the Jewish ritual baths, a mikveh, one of very few surviving in Europe.

Besalú: A Medieval County Town and Its Mikveh

Stand under the royal tombs raised on arches across the transept — the pantheon of the Crown of Aragon

Walk the cloister and work out what the Cistercians were actually after: water, isolation and farmland

Find the monks' dormitory, which is one of the largest surviving Cistercian dormitories anywhere

Work out the founding: given to monks from Fontfroide in 1149, community established 1153

Remember that this is a working monastery again, and that some of what you cannot see is why

Ramon Berenguer IV gave this site to Cistercian monks from Fontfroide in 1149 and the community was established under its first abbot in 1153 — it met everything the order asked for in a foundation: isolation, plenty of water and land to farm. It became the royal pantheon of the Crown of Aragon from the end of the 14th century until the royal house died out, and it is the prototype of the Spanish Cistercian abbey. UNESCO listed it in 1991. Cistercians live in it again, so parts of it are enclosure and closed to visitors.