Take the cremallera up from Ribes de Freser, because there is no road into the valley

Put your head under St Giles's pot and ring the bell, which is what the sanctuary is actually known for

Find out what was drafted here in 1931 and why it is called the Statute of Núria

Walk up towards the Puigmal on the ridge above the valley

Work out the story: a hermit around 700, four objects hidden, and a shepherd finding them in 1079

Núria is a valley at 2,000 metres in the eastern Pyrenees with no road into it — you arrive by rack railway from Ribes de Freser or you walk. The sanctuary at the top is where the first Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia was drafted in 1931, which is why it is called the Statute of Núria. The tradition is older: St Giles is said to have reached the valley around the year 700, leaving behind a Virgin, a cross, a bell and the pot he cooked in, all of them found in 1079. Women wanting children put their head under the pot and ring the bell.

Vall de Núria: A Rack Railway to a Statute

Walk the valley up from Eyne village along the riu d'Eina, a tributary of the Sègre — 6 km long and about 2 km wide, running north-west to south-east from the village to the Spanish frontier, with the reserve taking the upper part from 1,700 m up

Out of the 892 flowering species the reserve counts, find three of its own: the Adonis des Pyrénées and the Jonc des Pyrénées in the meadows, and the Pavot des Alpes on the limestone screes higher up

Follow Eyne's sentier archéologique round the granite dolmens and menhirs with their cup marks — the Dolmen de La Borda, the single remaining course of the Dolmen de Lo Pou, the Menhir de la Font del Sastre on the Bolquère road — and call in at the Maison de la Vallée for the valley's interpretation

Watch the rock faces for a wallcreeper and the sky for red-billed choughs, a golden eagle or a short-toed snake eagle among the valley's 82 nesting species, and on the open ground look for isard, mouflon and marmots and for the two Apollo butterflies

Botanists have been coming to the Vallée d'Eyne in the Cerdagne since the 18th century — Augustin Pyrame de Candolle and Hippolyte Coste among them — for the number of rare plants packed into it, and the reserve that manages it calls the place the vallée des fleurs, with 892 flowering species recorded. The national nature reserve created by decree on 18 March 1993 covers close to 1,200 hectares from 1,700m to 2,800m, 58 per cent of the commune, inside the Catalan Pyrenees regional park, and 82 bird species nest there.

The Vallée d'Eyne: The Botanists' Valley

Board the Train Jaune at Mont-Louis-La Cabanasse, in an open carriage if the season allows, and ride down the Tet valley over the 253m Pont Gisclard and the 236.7m masonry Pont Sejourne at Fontpedrouse

Get off at Bolquere-Eyne, at 1,592m the highest station on the SNCF network, and walk up onto the Col de la Perche above it where the gradients on either side reach 60 in a thousand

Walk the ramparts of Mont-Louis, Vauban's citadel at about 1,600m, UNESCO-listed since 2008 and still home to the army's commando training centre

Visit the solar furnace inside the walls at Mont-Louis, the one Felix Trombe built in 1949 to prove the idea after his 1946 experiment at Meudon, and which the big furnace at Odeillo was then modelled on

See the Odeillo solar furnace at Font-Romeu, in service since 1969 and with Parkent in Uzbekistan one of the two largest in the world: a parabola 60m across facing 63 steerable mirrors on the hillside, concentrating 10,000 times the power of the sun onto a spot a metre wide and up to 3,300 degrees C

The Train Jaune climbs through the Pyrenees from Villefranche-de-Conflent to Latour-de-Carol on a metre-gauge line opened between 1910 and 1927, fed by a third rail at 850 volts, through 19 tunnels and over the last railway suspension bridge left on a working line in France - the Pont Gisclard, named for the commandant who designed it and was killed on it in the load trial of 31 October 1909. At the top of the line are Vauban's citadel of Mont-Louis and two solar furnaces.

The Train Jaune: Over the Pyrenees to the Highest Station on the SNCF Network

Stand in front of the 12th-century portal and work out that it is laid out as a Roman triumphal arch

Read the carving as a programme rather than decoration, and work out what it is narrating

Find the tombs of the counts of Barcelona and Besalú

Find out what the scriptorium here produced and why Ripoll is named beside Fleury and Montecassino

Go on to Sant Joan de les Abadesses, which Wilfred founded for his daughter Emma

Wilfred the Hairy reconquered and repopulated the Ripoll valley and the Vic plain between 878 and 881 and founded this monastery around 880, probably on a Visigothic site. It became the burial place of the counts of Barcelona and of Besalú, and its scriptorium made it one of the great cultural centres of medieval Europe, in the same conversation as Saint-Denis, Fleury and Montecassino. In the 12th century it got a new doorway built as a triumphal arch — a vast carved programme that is one of the major works of Catalan Romanesque sculpture.

Ripoll: The Cradle of Catalonia

Walk the platforms at Latour-de-Carol–Enveitg and find all three gauges in the same station — standard, metre and Iberian, which no other station in France has, since Hendaye and Cerbère manage only two — then work out which of the three direct-current supplies, 1.5 kV, 3 kV or 850 V, feeds each of them, and look for the side third rail that powers the Cerdagne line

Ride the Train Jaune east off the end of the metre-gauge Cerdagne line and tick off three things from the window: Bolquère-Eyne, the highest station on the whole SNCF network at 1,592 m, the 236-metre masonry arches of the Pont Séjourné, and seven kilometres further the Pont Gisclard, the last railway suspension bridge in France still carrying trains

Cross the border into Puigcerdà, founded by Alfonso II of Aragon about 1177 and made capital of Cerdagne in place of Llívia, and find the bell tower of Santa Maria standing alone — the 12th-century church beneath it was pulled down in the anarchist months of 1936 and never rebuilt

Go round the convent of Sant Domènec, founded in 1290, and the Museu Cerdà, then walk down to where the Carol runs into the Segre below the town — the stream that gives Latour-de-Carol its name, joining the river that will end up in the Ebro

At 1,231m in the Cerdagne, the station of Latour-de-Carol–Enveitg is the only one in France with three track gauges, standard, metre and Iberian: night trains and regional trains arrive from Toulouse and Paris, the Train Jaune from Villefranche-de-Conflent ends here, and Catalan trains leave for Barcelona. A few kilometres away across the border, Puigcerdà, founded around 1177, is the capital of the Cerdanya.

Latour-de-Carol: The Station of Three Gauges on the Spanish Border

Walk the circuit of Vauban's walls at Villefranche and find all three parts of the UNESCO ensemble from the ground: the enceinte itself, Fort Libéria on the slope above, and the entrance to the Cova Bastera caves cut into the rock at the foot of the wall

Climb the 734 steps of Napoleon III's underground stair up to Fort Libéria and find the cells where Louis XIV's police held the women of the affaire des poisons — Anne Guesdon for thirty-six years and La Chapelain for forty-three, until they died there

Walk the 250 m of ascent from Casteil up to Saint-Martin-du-Canigou, then find all three churches on the site: the Virgin's, half cut into the rock and barely three metres high, Saint Martin's directly above it, and Saint Michael's up in the separate bell tower

In the abbey cloister, work out which three of the four galleries are the old ones and which was rebuilt from stone taken off a 12th-century upper storey, and pace the irregular quadrilateral — 14 m on three sides, 10 on the west

Villefranche-de-Conflent, one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France, had its medieval walls pulled down after the French took it in 1654 and new ones built to Vauban's plans from 1669, finished only with the porte de France in 1783 and the porte d'Espagne in 1791. On 7 July 2008 UNESCO listed the fortified ensemble — the walls, the citadel of Fort Libéria and the Cova Bastera caves — as part of the Vauban network. Fort Libéria, built from 1681 at the same time as Mont-Louis, stands about 150 m above the town and is reached by an underground stair of 734 steps that Napoleon III had cut between 1850 and 1853. A few kilometres south, the abbey of Saint-Martin-du-Canigou, whose church was consecrated on 10 November 1009, has two churches built one above the other, which the source calls very rare.

Villefranche-de-Conflent: Vauban's Walls, the Thousand Steps to Fort Libéria and Saint-Martin-du-Canigou

Put a hand on the forged iron cross at 2,785 m and work out what it took to get it there: the Notre-Dame-la-Real scout troop of Perpignan carried it up from their meeting rooms in the town in 1943, in the middle of the occupation — and look at what it is bolted into, an orthogneiss that began as granite 425 million years ago and was cooked into its present state when the Pyrenees' ancestors were built

From the summit, work round the horizon and see how far you can honestly claim: the Conflent and the Roussillon plain below, the Empordà over the border, Barcelona to the south on a clear day, and north-east at sunrise the Massif Central and Mont Ventoux — in the right refraction, the Écrins

Walk the 250 metres up from Casteil to Saint-Martin-du-Canigou and find the thing that makes it rare: two churches stacked one on the other, the lower one cut partly into the rock and dedicated to the Virgin, the upper one to Saint Martin, consecrated in November 1009 — then count the cloister galleries and work out which three are original

Go up for the night of 22 June, stay with the fire the crowd lights on the summit and keeps watch over until dawn, and then follow one of the groups that sets off downhill with a torch — each one carrying the flame to a different Saint John's fire somewhere in Catalonia

Look into the north cirque between the Canigou and the pic Barbet at 2,712 m and find the hanging patch of old snow at around 2,450 m — all that is left of the glacier that once filled the whole bowl — then count the climate bands you have driven and walked through on the way up, Mediterranean to about 1,000 m, montane to 1,700, subalpine to 2,300 and alpine above that, with no permanent snow zone at all

The Canigou is the most easterly of the high Pyrenean summits at 2,785m, standing over the Conflent with a forged iron cross on top that Perpignan scouts carried up in 1943. It was made a Grand Site de France in 2012 as the sacred mountain of Catalan country: on the eve of Saint John, 22 June, hundreds climb to the summit, and at daybreak groups come down with torches to light the Saint John's fires across Catalonia.

The Pic du Canigou: The Catalans' Sacred Mountain

Find the medieval wall and the two ruined towers that Gaudí built the house around

Work out what Gaudí thought was wrong with Gothic and how the building argues the point

Go up onto the roof terrace for the view over Barcelona

Find Domingo Sugrañes's tiled benches at the entrance and Joan Rubió's viaduct on the estate

Work out who Martin the Humane was and why the end of his line mattered to Catalonia

Martin the Humane, the last king of the house of Barcelona, had a residence on this hill under Collserola. By 1900 all that was left was some wall and two half-ruined towers — and Gaudí, commissioned to build the Casa Figueras here, incorporated them into the new house. Bellesguard belongs to his neo-Gothic period, and it is the clearest surviving statement of what he thought about Gothic: he had studied Catalan, Balearic, Roussillon, Leonese and Castilian Gothic closely and concluded it was an imperfect style, only half solved. This building is his attempt to finish the job.

Bellesguard: Gaudí on a Royal Ruin

Get to the Plaça Major on a market morning, which is what the square was built for

Buy llonganissa de Vic and work out why the fog and cold of this plain are what cures it

Find the crypt and bell tower of Bishop Oliba's cathedral of 1038 inside the later building

Go into the Museu Episcopal for one of the best collections of Catalan Romanesque and Gothic art anywhere

Come for the Mercat del Ram, the old livestock fair, which is the town's original market

Bishop Oliba consecrated the Romanesque cathedral at Vic in 1038, and its crypt and bell tower are still there inside the later building. The town has always been a place of fairs and markets — the oldest is the Mercat del Ram, a livestock fair — and the Plaça Major is one of the largest arcaded squares in Catalonia, still filling with stalls twice a week. Vic is also the sausage capital of Catalonia: the llonganissa cured here has a protected designation, and the reason is the town's particular combination of cold, fog and altitude.