Thursday, January 8, 2015

Our First Guests - Day 2

The next day, we all slept in a bit, since we didn't get home until 2:00 am.  We decided to head up to Olot, about 1/2 hour west of us to hike in the Garrotxa Volcanic Park.  The Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park is a natural park area covering a Holocene volcanic field (also known as the Olot volcanic field) in Catalonia, northeastern Spain. The volcanos, of which there are about forty within the park, are no longer active, with the last eruption (Croscat) occurring about 11,000 years ago. However, the region is still seismically active, and a large earthquake in 1428 caused damage to buildings and twenty deaths in Barcelona, 90 kilometres (56 mi) to the south.

We took all the dogs and headed out.  It was sunny and a lovely day.  We hiked for about 4 hours. First we hiked up and then down into the Santa Margarida Volcano crater.  The volcano has a perimeter of 2 kilometers and a height of 682 meters. The hermitage of Santa Margarida, after which the volcano was named, is inside the crater of the volcano. The building was destroyed in 1428 during the 1428 Catalonia earthquake and rebuilt in 1865.





Then we hiked back up and down and around to visit La Fageda d'en Jordà, which is a forest of beech trees.  We stopped and had lunch in the forest and then continued our hike back to the car.  A perfect day.






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