We have visited Spain and Catalunya for rock climbing many, many times - in fact we've lost count! We've always visited either in autumn or winter. This year, the rain in France drove us south in springtime and it turns out it was a fantastic time to visit. We had wonderful, sunny days, 3 big, memorable hail storms, cool weather for climbing and we were treated to the best wild flowers we have ever seen.
Both David and I probably said 'Look! Here's a new kind of flower.', about a hundred times in the past few weeks.
Here's the visual story with a handful of the hundreds of photos we did take.
Spanish alpine flowers, Castello Mayor, PyreneesThis plant eventually gets large and leggy, but it's leaves are so perfectly sculptural when small.Flowers in towns abound, both untamed and rampant and in tended window boxes. You can see the sketch I did of this little nook in Rubio in my previous post.Who doesn't love fluffy pink flowers?Lilies? Sometimes there would be so many of these in one spot it would make walking a bit stressful ;-)More pretty whites.
And some sketches....
Alpine flowers near Ager, CatalunyaPretty window boxes in Laspuna, near the Pyrenees, SpainI pushed open this little wooden gate into the cemetry and was treated to rampant, wild, untamed meadow. Perfect!Oh the joy of fields of poppies. Never tire of it!
Part 3 of this series will be climbing, but due to the relatively small number of photos I think I'll probably just stick to the story of climbing in Riglos.
I'm off to Italy next week for my last retreat of 2026 and I'm getting all sorts of things ready. One of them is, of course, my palettes. One of the questions I get asked a lot is how I decide which c...
A couple of weeks ago, while hiking with friends in Val Ferret on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc massif, I made a decision that will surprise no one who knows me. An hour in, we stopped to shed ou...
My first watercolour retreat in Spain — Cabo de Gata, September 2027. Four years ago I moved to Spain. I've been painting here ever since — and quietly planning the day I could share it with you. ...