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

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

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

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

Walk up from the first hairpin of the D 8 above Aulus-les-Bains, on the road toward the col de Latrape, taking the forest track between wood and pasture, crossing the passerelle de l'Artigou at 1,060 m and following the right bank of the Arse to the foot of the falls at 1,380 m — about 90 minutes each way

At the foot of the falls, trace the water down through all three stages: the single 100 m drop at the top, the head of hair of small cascades below it, and the point where they gather back into one last fall

In the thermal park at Aulus-les-Bains, find the grotto built in 1873 to house the springs that the Romans knew but which only made the village's name in the 1820s, and the war memorial of 1924 in front of the pont du Midi

At Aulus-les-Bains find where the Arse, which rises at the foot of the pic de Turguilla on the Spanish border and carries the falls at its midpoint, empties into the Garbet

From the spa village of Aulus-les-Bains, in the Pyrénées ariégeoises regional park, a path climbs about 90 minutes to the Cascade d'Ars at 1,380 m in the Garbet valley: 246 m in all, a single drop of 100 m breaking into a fan of small falls that regroup into one last cascade. Fr.wikipedia calls it one of the most picturesque and imposing in the Pyrenees, and the 19th-century pyreneist Count Henry Russell put it ahead of every rival. The falls and their valley have been a classified site since 11 October 2018.

Aulus-les-Bains and the Cascade d'Ars: The 246m Falls of the Couserans

Walk the boardwalks out across the tablas and work out what a tabla fluvial actually is

Work out why it forms here: two rivers meeting on flat ground with almost nowhere to drain

Count wildfowl from the hides — over two thousand species live in the park

Find out what happened to the aquifer underneath and what the 2007 complaint to UNESCO said

Decide for yourself whether a wetland that depends on groundwater can survive irrigated farming around it

Tablas fluviales form where a river spills over its own banks in its middle course on almost flat ground with nowhere to drain, and Las Tablas de Daimiel — at the meeting of the Guadiana and the Cigüela — is one of the last surviving examples of that ecosystem anywhere. Over two thousand species live in it. It is also in serious trouble: the aquifer underneath has been over-pumped for irrigation for decades, and in 2007 four conservation organisations complained to UNESCO that La Mancha Húmeda and Daimiel in particular had degraded to the point of losing the values they were listed for.

Las Tablas de Daimiel: A Wetland Being Drained

Drink from the Fuente de Gándara, which is what the whole municipality is built on

Work out that this is the smallest municipality in Galicia at 2.31 square kilometres

Find the Palacio del Agua, the old bottling plant for Aguas de Mondariz

Look at the old Gran Hotel and work out who was coming here in its period

Find out why the spa was made a separate municipality from Mondariz in the 1920s

Mondariz-Balneario covers 2.31 square kilometres and has about seven hundred inhabitants, which makes it the smallest municipality in Galicia — and it exists because of the water. The Peinador family developed the springs from the 19th century into a resort that drew the Spanish and Portuguese elite, and the town was separated from Mondariz in the 1920s specifically so that the spa could govern itself. What is left is the Gándara and Troncoso springs, the Palacio del Agua bottling plant and the shell of the old Gran Hotel.