Well, it looks downhill on the map and even sounds ditto: From the Pyrenees to the Sea. I was vaguely expecting a stately, five-day descent from the cool mountains that nudge the French border to the agreeable Catalan village where Salvador Dalí kept a house in Spain’s northeastern corner. But what went down also went up. The climb was as good as the descent, and it was pretty much completely exhilarating.

Having gotten a train to Dalís birthplace, Figueres, we did indeed start off up in the mountains, a stones throw from France. And we were so were filled with the romance about sun-dappled uplands and how, nearly 80 years earlier, foppish Brits equipped only with tweed jackets and idealistic zeal had arrived in the dead of night to do their bit against fascism.

The first night was cool. Positively chilly, actually, and wet, even in late May, but it gave us something to look back on in smug accomplishment. The first days walking, through thickly wooded and wonderfully unfarmed, precipitous hills was a very roundabout route up to the village of Maçanets de Cabrenys (only three kilometres as the crow flies), a well-appointed bolt hole for hot Catalans in the summer, but seemingly deserted otherwise. This was something of a limb-loosener and gave us an early opportunity to get lost to no great detriment. In fact, as we were to find, the route-work by our tour operator, Inntravel, could not be faulted all week, but it would not be a proper holiday without an argument about the route.

My wifes infallible assertions about grandes randonnées and tracks carved by generations of travellers as we stumbled into the ever more impenetrable undergrowth and the stars twinkled ever brighter became a bit of a chorus. Anyway, it all served to produce a feeling of virtue and good health, topped off by a swim and sauna back at the hotel La Central, a curious former hydroelectric plant converted into a spa.

The next day a taxi arrived to take us down across the Llobregat valley to our second hotel, the spectacular Can Xiquet, on the edge of the village of Cantallops. This was to be another day of not so much walking from A to B with bags going on ahead, as walking from A to B then back to A, but it was none the worse for that.

The sun had come out and we were getting the hang of it. Moving rapidly past some of the most beautifully situated slaughterhouses in Europe, mercifully just a brief reminder that people have to earn a living somehow, we began a dizzying climb up to the castle of Requesens, overlooking Albera Natural Park, through a riot of lizards, woodchats, shrike, redstarts, hoopoe, dark blue bees and clouded yellow butterflies.

The air was scented with lavender and fennel. Our route was almost unhindered by other walkers and, as fatigue and fractiousness began to encroach on our bliss, we wondered if there really would be any lunch to be had in so deserted a spot. We need not have worried. We came across a particularly remote and absurdly beautiful farmhouse and diffidently wondered if they might have a glass of water. We were met by a scene straight from Volume I of the Ludicrous Holiday Fantasies of Soppy Brits who romanticise the Locals (but which never really happen) textbook.

There was a room heaving with ruddy-faced Pyreneean types, beaming expansively and inviting los ingleses to join them in their hearty lunch of cold cuts of delicious but not necessarily approved local meats, complete with buckets-full of robust red wine. And, yes, it really would have been rude not to. In fact, this was not someone’s house, nor was it a Stella Artois ad, but the most rustic of restaurants.

Our new friends were a club of middle-aged walkers from across the border in France, clearly in no need of lessons in enjoying oneself. The long walk down was made easier by dreamy thoughts of transnational fraternity. That was a bit of a highlight, but more was to follow.

The walk had taken its toll, so the following day we cheated and got a cab part of the way before jumping out to walk through some fairly intensive viticulture to our next base, a delightful tryst at the village of Garriguella.

Not for the first time, even in a fairly popular part of the country and only 12 km from the sea, we barely saw a car during our walk, a reminder of the hugeness of Spain. Our overnight base was a chance to see a more modest facet of the country. We bought ourselves a picnic of bread, local sausage, asparagus soup and fruit, consumed at our couldn’t-be-more accommodating hostess kitchen table.

A little bogus it may have been this was a business transaction but we did feel we were doing the getting to know you thing with some outstandingly nice people. Then, the last two days of walking. The first of these, up and over the cliffs towards the sea, was spectacular, taking in the precipitously situated (originally ninth-century) Benedictine monastery of San Pere de Rodes.

Down we trundled, following the steep and rocky descent to Port de la Selva, a former fishing village and now a resort, mostly modernised but not unpleasantly so, where we stayed at the Hotel Porto Cristo. The final leg, up and over the peninsula, took us through the Cap de Creus Natural Park, another remarkably barely built-upon chunk of curiously treeless terrain, with spectacular views to the Mediterranean.

Our final day’s walk was a demanding 13- km worth over tricky-though-not-ruinous terrain and took most of the day. But after several days of wholesomeness and happy evening unwinding, we were able to take it in our stride. So, when we reached Cadaqués, the El Dorado of our trip late on Day Five, we were bursting with fitness but also ready to relax. And relaxing is what Cadaqués, a preposterously pretty but now thriving holiday spot, is ideally suited to.

Our hotel, the Playa Sol, could not have been closer to the warm, docile sea; the sort of place Mr Ripley might have chosen to end someone’s days. Here, a visit to one of the several excellent fish restaurants is obligatory, even if the intrusion of foreign tourism has reached the stage where one was advertising gambas, but this was the exception that proved the rule.

The place has managed to retain its charm. A walk to Dalí’s last home was another aspect that stays in the memory, as did the swim, yes, it was just about warm enough in a brilliantly clear sea en route. Beware the urchins, though. They stay in the foot. (The Independent)