Montserrat and the road to the monastery

Montserrat is the mountain you can see from the top of Tibidabo, a saw-blade of conglomerate towers with a Benedictine monastery halfway up. The road to it is 60 km from Barcelona and takes an hour; the last ten kilometres are the reason to drive rather than take the train.

Leave Barcelona on the A-2, join the C-55 towards Manresa and turn off at Monistrol de Montserrat onto the BP-1103. The road climbs the south face in a series of stacked hairpins with the towers directly above the windscreen. It is well surfaced, wide enough, and busy on weekends and holidays, so go early; the car park at the top fills by late morning.

At the monastery, walk the basilica, take the funicular to Sant Joan for the view down onto the road you climbed, and buy the mató cheese from the farmers' stalls. Instead of returning the same way, continue over the mountain on the BP-1103 to Can Maçana and drop down to the A-2 via El Bruc: a quieter road with longer sightlines and the whole massif in the mirror.

In a Turbo S the climb is effortless and the front axle lift is worth using on the monastery car park ramps. Keep the traction on: the surface is polished in the hairpins from decades of coach tyres.