Camino de Santiago in Catalonia, Spain – Day 1 | From Llivia to Isovol

It was our first day of Cami de Sant Jaume or Catalan Camino de Santiago. The plan was to do the 80 kms in 4 days and get from Llivia village in the province of Girona to Organya in the province of Lleida. It is also called the Camino del Segre, because it follows the stream of the river Segre all the way through crossing the region of Cerdanya and Alt Urgell. It is just a part of the whole Camino de Santiago that can be taken starting from Pyrenees in Spain and moving towards the city of Pamplona where it joins the French Way.

That day we planned to make around 20 kms starting our way from our hometown Llivia in Spain and to get to the camping site at the village of Isovol.

The day started with our alarm not taking off and us sleeping in and starting late. In the middle of the summer the days are long so we weren’t really worried about not getting to the planned destination.

But right from the start the sun was very high in the sky and it was already pretty hot. But we expected the trail to be quite easy as it was all down the river and going through the fields and not so much in the mountains.

So we crossed the border from Llivia, Spain to the village of Ur, little piece of French land between the Spanish borders and then back again to the village Puigcerda in Spain.

We met the Little Yellow Train on the way – the local touristic train going through the French Pyrenees.

We got a bit lost in the village of Puicerda not seeing any yellow signs to guide us but luckily we found an indicator quite fast.

The Cami de Ral route took us from Puigcerda to the next village Bolvir without any major challenges. The only thing we didn’t like about it that it was an asphalt car road instead of the dirt road but it might be excellent for biking.

In Bolvir we got lost in the narrow streets once again and had a hard time founding our way out. The marking was kind of lost there. But thanks to GPS we managed to do it. For that part we were getting away from the river and only then we started to come back to it.

At one point, suddenly we realized that there is no tripod hanging on our backpack and we knew that it should had fallen down and we lost it. So we had to go back in circles several times trying to find it in all parts. But probably it had dropped down in the village and somebody just picked it up. So sadly we had to continue on without it. And it helped us a lot in filming us both and doing some different perspective shots. But we made a decision to go on and figure out the ways to film without it. We just never lost anything during our hikes and we were shocked at first. But it’s life and it can happen to anybody.

The trail as expected was quite easy and relaxing with the good marking overall, except for the villages. We lost a lot of time searching for the tripod and it was getting late. But we still hoped to get in time for the camping to be open and have a good rest there.

Here is the link to Google map to follow the hike: