Gaudi and the concrete picnic tables

I can't fill you in with all the Gaudi knowledge, Clare has done that and is able to do more too. However, Barcelona had been touched with his design flair in quite a major way.

Having left Barcelona behind now, it has been left to the meer mortals amongst us, to try and bring the joy of design and creation together in the vain hope of seemlessley matching nature and objects as one. We stumbled across one such place. I shall never know the designers name, but the picnic area along the CV26 just outside of Solsona was a little bit of magic. (I say the CV26, but it could be something different. Spanish roads have a flair for having more than one or two names, and also for changing their names on a whim!)

The designer had neatly woven into a landscape of babbling brook, tall trees, woodland paths etc, a series of picnic areas. Now in Britain, budget constraints and creativity would argue until budget constraints won, and the result would be a wooden picnic bench from B&Q. 

However, the Spanish Gaudi influence, and their ability to make anything out of concrete has allowed the magical world of the forest to become a reality. I'll let the photos do the talking, but it was mad, completely daft. 

One guy turned up in his Citroen Saxo, parked up, found his own toadstool set, and then duly got out his packed lunch from his plastic bag and sat happily on his own whilst his texted his fairy friends. He must've been a fungi, but he couldn't sit at our table because there wasn't mushroom!

The popularity of this place was quite incredible though, with quite an eclectic clientele. Even with a little toadstool fairy magic, the daft parking of others made our exit less hasty and induced me to drive with a bit more 'biffage', but I didn't actually scratch a thing!

Ed