Day 1: Castellar d'en Hug to La Poble de Llillet

The Llobregat river springs to life between a few boulders below the town of Castellar d'en Hug, only a few miles south of the Spanish-French border in the Pyrenees Mountains. These springs have become a tourist attraction for thousands of visitors each year. The public water company Aigües Ter-Llobregat (ATLL), and the local city hall have invested in giving visitors a good impression. Using signs and a multimedia film called "El Llobregat: Un riu amic" (The Llobregat: A friendly river), they sell the idea that the river is well managed. If nothing else, the positive spin fed to visitors forces them to think more carefully about what sort of river they see today, and perhaps what type of Llobregat they would like to live with in the future.

Sara joined me on the first afternoon of my trip. The restaurant owners of Castellar d'en Hug told us that an abandoned trail would take us to La Poble, although it was so grown over that we lost the trail after only a few minutes. We descended into another valley where we found small tributary of the Llobregat that was floored with red soils. Without any trail to follow, it was easier jump from rock to rock down the middle of the stream than to walk along the bank.

The water was clear and beautiful. This despite being told by town residents that the waste water treatment plant of Castellar de n'Hug is located above the birth of the Llobregat. It was unclear why the town chose to pump water uphill to the waste water treatment plant, only to divert it downhill, around, I assume, the birth of the Llobregat. There is an outside chance that the wastewater is put into a pipe that feeds an hydroplant at the former cement factory at the Clot del Moro. Still, the flows of waste water, even at the birth of the Llobregat, remained a mystery.

Only a few kilometers below the river's birth, there is an abaondoned cement factory that has now been transformed into a cement museum. The old factory reminds me of the heavy industry that I will see along the entire trip.