What is Rambling?

Rambling is the most genuine form of union between sport and culture. But, above all, rambling is also:

• A really practical and easy way to know and love our country, its history, its traditions, its folklore and its culture.
  
  
• A help to the conservation and recuperation of old paths that belong to an important and forgotten part of our historical, artistical and cultural patrimony.
  
  
• An sport that everybody can do, that allows to be fit even to people advanced in age. In the practice of rambling there are no limits of age and of any other kind.
• A source of health."One day of rambling, a week of good health".
  
  
• A leisure activity perfect to recuperate oneself from the stress of our life.
  
  
• To practice rambling is an activity that allows the realization of active holidays and vac week-ends.
  
  
• Ramblers are an enthusiast collective, fond of nature. For all of this, they are sensitized in conserving and preserving the environment.
  
  
• Rambling is a practical and easy way to introduce children and adolescents to the country-side. Specially, rambling is a great field to complement the activities for school-children, mainly in camping-sites and in rural cottages. There, the teachers can make different tasks according to each group.
  
  
• A European movement full of vigour and with a great future.
  
  

What is a footpath?

A footpath is a route that has been designed to go by several kinds of paths, tracks and roads and to visit valleys, cols, mountain rages, and really interesting places because of their landscape, culture, touristic interests, social interests, etc.

Kinds of footpaths

• Senders de Gran Recorregut (GR) (more than 50 km)
  (red-and-white marks)
  
  
• Senders de Petit Recorregut (PR) (between 10 and 50 km)
  (yellow-and-white marks)
  
  
• Senders Locals (less than 10 km)
  (green-and-white marks)
  
  
• Senders Urbans (circumscribed in a city)
  (red-and-yellow marks)

There are also VARIANTS, that begin in a selected point of the footpath and that return to the same footpath in another different point. Those variants are alternatives to the main route.

The footpaths can be lineal or circular.

How a footpath is made?

Once the route is designed and defined, a proposal must be sent to the Federació d'Entitats Excursionistes de Catalunya (FEEC) which must consist in:

• The justification of the footpath (which motives, why is it so interesting, etc)
• The route with the most significant points marked.
• The services (hostels, refuges, youth hostels, etc.) that exist in the route.
• The length prevision of the footpath and the needed time for its realization.
• Who will be in charge of its realization and maintenance.
• What kind of publication is going to be prepared.
• A photocopy of the regional map of the ICC 1:50.000 with the route marked.
• A unevenness profile.
• A letter, addressed to the Comitè Català de Senders de la FEEC, asking for the acceptance of the proposal and the assignation of the corresponent register number.
• A name and a contact telephone number.

When the FEEC would accept the proposal, the marking process can begin through painting marks and sign post if it is necessary. After the marking process, then the description of the route, the topographical data, the time and the distance can be made.

Once the FEEC verifies the job made, the FEEC homologues it and makes it public.

The publication of the corresponent guide is an important element in order to have the necessary information. The publication of the guide of a PR can be made directly by the person who proposes the route. The publication of a group of PR and/or of any GR must be made through the association Catalana de Rambling.

Antecedents of rambling in Catalonia

The fact to mark paths to be easily followed in any season or weather conditions (rain, snow, etc) is ancestral. Even nowadays, the milestones are very useful.

In the very beginning, those marks had comercial, social, cattle dealer, militar aims, when the time went on their utility was increased and they became a really important element for mountaineers. Several times, regulated marches, rallis, mountain ski races, etc, use those footpaths.

The "organised" rambling, what is the same, ti mark several routes, to maintain them, to depict them and to walk by them was an activity that began in France in 1947 between lots of nature lovers. Nowadays, the French footpaths ("randonnèes") have a great social, touristical, economic, formative, cultural, etc, importance.

In Catalonia, the activity of rambling began in 1972. It cannot be in another way, because rambling is a wonderful way through which the nature lover, who wants to forget the city and its noise, has an easy access to the richnesses and beauties of the landscape, the architecture and the culture that can be found in our country and in Europe in general.

So, the fact that rambling was a so easy access to the mountain meant that rambling gained quickly a lot of fans. Nowadays, the organized activities made by mountain clubs, horse-racing clubs, boy-scouts, mountain bikers, athlets, etc has, as its base, the Xarxa Catalana de Senders.

Xarxa Catalana de Senders

Nowadays, the Xarxa Catalana de Senders has about 6.000 km of marked footpaths, with 38 edited guides, most of them exhausted.

The Xarxa Catalana de Senders is linked, through the French and Andorran counterpart to the rest of the European net in the north. In the south and west, through the Valencian and the Aragonese nets, it is also linked with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula.

This so important task has been made by a good team of moutaineers and clubs all over Catalonia that have worked unselfishly for more than twenty-five years.

Kinds of signs

Direction to follow


   GR          PR          Local         Urban

Wrong direction

Warning of changing way

Turn (right -left)

Copyright © 1999 Catalana de Senderisme