Day 7: Manresa - Monistrol de Montserrat

Manresa is a medium size Catalan city with over 70,000 residents. The night before I took refuge in the Youth Hostel el Carme managed by the Generalitat. The Cardener river, the primary tributary of the Llobregat, passes through Manresa. Like the Llobregat, the Cardener is polluted by the mining industry and also contains high levels of salt and chloride derivatives. In the morning I had a close look at the Cardener, and it looked even more turbid that the Llobregat. It was disappointing to see the Cardener look in such bad shape, but I had to accept that from here on, the river I was to follow was going to look like a river of mud and guck.

Starting in Manresa I also had to accept more city infrastructure by my side. In addition to roads and highways travelling up the river valley, I was also surrounded by more gas stations, warehouses, automotive workshops and light industry. I was also surprised to find a golf course, and two train lines. Mid morning, I found a worker fixing a river gage on the Cardener near the golf course. He was subcontracted by the Catalan Water Agency to fix or maintain proper functioning of the gages that automatically took readings on river velocity and height, which they used to estimate volume.

Soon after learning about the river gage, I came across the first of the monitoring sites that I had visited with the team of biologists from the University of Barcelona. Only a few meters from this site, I met up with the Llobregat again. At the confluence of these two rivers, I was hoping to see something significant, such as a difference in color between the Llobregat and the Cardener. Unfortunately, I did not see anything of the sort. On the banks of the rivers I noticed that the city hall of Castellgali was cleaning up the bank, maintaining the paths, planting new trees and removing the invasive cane. In most places however, the cane was coming back.

The dearth of trails complicated the entire day, often forcing me to backtrack. In Castellgali, I followed a trail nearly a kilometer only to find it dead end at a water well. Local cities had several wells along the banks of the Llobregat, and today it became clear that many of these wells remain in use. Angel Miralda had showed me wells near the banks of the Llobregat and he told me that the water was not filtered. Chlorine was added before distribution, and off it went. I wondered what the salt content was in these wells downstream of the salt mines.

The only beautiful segment today came at the end. First, before Castellbell i el Vilar there is a beautiful meander followed by an ACA monitoring station and an industrial canal. Then, as one approaches Monistrol de Monsterrat, the peculiar mountains of Monsterrat loomed large above me. Having arrived at Montserrat, I felt that I was in familiar territory, and no longer so far from the Mediterranean.