Discovering Barcelona’s green belt

Going hik­ing with Barcelona at your feet and en­joy­ing its char­ac­ter­is­tic urban sil­hou­ette, watch­ing the city pour­ing to­wards the sea, with the fa­mous streets de­signed by Ilde­fons Cerdà, al­ways in a straight line, end­ing at the beach, is one of the at­trac­tions of the Ronda Verda, a sign­posted cir­cuit of paths and bike lanes that crosses the great nat­ural sys­tems of the county of Barcelonès.

This is an itin­er­ary that is mainly leisurely and aimed at tourism. Ap­prox­i­mately 72 kilo­me­tres in length in total, it passes through the Barcelonès mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties of Badalona, Barcelona, Hos­pi­talet de Llo­bre­gat, Sant Adrià de Besòs and Santa Coloma de Gramenet, as well as Es­plugues de Llo­bre­gat and Mont­cada i Reixac.

It is a cir­cu­lar route con­sist­ing of six clearly dif­fer­en­ti­ated sec­tions: Llo­bre­gat, Mon­tjuïc, Collserola Park, Besòs River Park, and the Ser­ral­ada de Ma­rina Park. Pass­ing through so many dif­fer­ent areas means the route fea­tures a va­ri­ety of char­ac­ter­is­tics and par­tic­u­lar­i­ties, which com­bine urban sec­tions with long stretches in nat­ural areas.

In short, the route forms a green cor­ri­dor, which con­nects and binds to­gether urban parks and fa­cil­i­ties and nat­ural areas.

It al­lows you to enjoy and visit a wide range of places of nat­ural, cul­tural, so­cial, eco­nomic and tourist in­ter­est around Barcelona and in the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties near the city, in­clud­ing the Collserola Park, the moun­tain of Mon­tjuïc, the Barcelonès sea front, the River Besòs, the Barcelona Trade Fair com­plex on Gran Via, the Fòrum, and the Ser­ral­ada de Ma­rina Park.

You can start the cir­cuit just about any­where along the route, using the net­work of cy­cling lanes in each mu­nic­i­pal­ity or tak­ing ad­van­tage of con­nec­tions avail­able on the met­ro­pol­i­tan pub­lic trans­port net­work.

The Ronda Verda is also con­nected with the net­work of longer dis­tance paths and routes, which are iden­ti­fied with the GR clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

Due to the sign­posts, the Ronda Verda is an easy route to fol­low. It is also a cir­cuit that is a flex­i­ble, as it does not end or start at a par­tic­u­lar point and can be ac­cessed at any point along the route. The cir­cuit also runs in ei­ther di­rec­tion.

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