A Day in the Dead Ox Mountains
Serra de Boumort
Tuesday 6 February 2024
I always feel a frisson of existential jouissance when Kiss frontman Paul Stanley launches himself into the first chords of the national anthem of rock ‘n’ roll. ‘I wanna rock ‘n’ roll all nite’, he shrills, in his thick New Yoik brogue, ‘and party every day’. It’s an enticing proposition, and one I succumbed to far too often in my youth but as the stage pyrotechnics ignite I remember that I’m now the wrong side of 55 and have dabbled deep enough in philosophy to understand that if one were to rock and roll all nite AND party every day, the prospect of constant carousing might soon begin to pall.
I was reminded of the Starchild’s lyrical bombast when driving along the narrow road that winds up through olive groves from the town of La Pobla de Segur to the village of Hortoneda (or Ortoneda as it appears on local signposts, with the H painted out). As an unreconstructed orophile I invariably plough on along the C13 to access the higher slopes of the Catalan Pyrenees but today I turned off at the head of the Pantà de Sant Antoni, the water level of which is disturbingly low. One can never, of course, tire of the mountains but the occasional awayday amongst the peaks of less lofty summits makes for a pleasant change. And it’s not as though I wouldn’t be back in the Alt Pirineu 72 hours later.
The Serra de Boumort (in Catalan Bou = ox, mort = dead) forms part of the Pre-Pyrenean range, a complex mountain system which runs parallel to the main massif (the Pirineu Axial) some forty or so kilometres to the north. To call them ‘foothills’ would be to do these mighty fine mountains a gross injustice because they are mountains and they are part of the Pyrenean range. They are the orographic aperativo to the plato principal (please don’t ask me about what constitutes the dessert as I don’t do puddings).
The massif consists of a series of east-west calciferous, forested ridges rising to a maximum altitude of 2077m at the Cap de Boumort, high enough for the limited precipitation to fall as snow during the colder winter months. The earth is dry, the soil thin; human settlement is sparse and activity infrequent so wildlife is abundant and diverse: four species of deer, wild boar and a veritable feast of raptors - vultures, eagles, hawks and falcons. If you come here craving company your patience will be sorely tested, it’s a place that, for the most part, tourism and tourists have passed by, like I normally do. In that sense, the Serra de Boumort is less hidden secret and more guilty pleasure. Trundling along the gentle forest pistas, like Toby the Tram Engine on sunshine tabs, you castigate yourself for not having the cojones to tackle the more acclivitous angles of the ‘proper’ mountains. ‘What a languorous oaf you are, Dr Ramblanista, eschewing the rough and embracing the smooth’. But then I turn a corner and across another wide vista there’s a flash of silver and the briefest glimpse of a steely eye as a sparrowhawk breaks for cover.
It was one of those days when you set out tentatively, in the lowest gear, and worry that you might not get as far as you’d wanted. I’d like to say that, in terms of ambulatory experience, quality is more important than quality but the truth is that distance matters. No pain, no gain, the vista from the Coll de Creu at 1300m was all the more rewarding for the effort expended in getting there, though to be honest it was little more than a gentle 6km slog up a yielding forest track. But the further I hiked, the more the Serra de Boumort, perhaps reassured that I wasn’t a colonialising interloper but an integral part of the scene, lowered its shield. Scattered in the forest are remnants of long gone rural past, the Torre de Peruba clinging impossibly to a sheer limestone crag, a lonely hermitage high on the ridge and, in the adjacent valley, the deserted village of Herba-sabina (locally known as Asbarsavina).
After a couple of hours an ten kilometres of walking I decide it’s time to turn back. On this occasion I have no choice but to retrace my steps. No pasa nada, all perspectives are equal but some, of course, are more equal than others and the long, easy descent down to Hortenada has me moving through the landscape like a high speed train. There is an inherent jouissance in ambulatory movement, a liberative exhileration. I walk therefore I am, nothing else on this earth matters.
Today has been a reconnaisance, a peek behind the screen to scratch the surface. Come the summer I’ll return with my tent to spend a long weekend on my own, communing with nature. Back at my laptop in Lleida I shall dream of those days, more often than not I’ll think about nothing else. There are changes coming, life-altering ones as, approaching my sixtieth birthday, I shed the bonds of captivity and become a wild-haired feral creature. Back to the egg.
