Barcelona tours - Taste wine and visit village chapels and bars in the Penedès near Vilafranca

This walk takes you through the heart of the Penedès, one of Spain's most interesting (and tasty) wine regions, with a fine selection of local bars to cheer your spirits en route.

We start in an ancient village on the Roman road from Cadiz to Rome (Hannibal came this way), featuring a 10th century castle and a village telly station.

Then we walk along olive tree-lined tracks through vineyards and past farms (1, 2 (Montserrat in distance), 3, 4) to ...

(Before we get to where we're going to, if you tell us in advance we can fix up a short tasting of some excellent wines on a small farm just off the path. Back to the chase:)

... a small settlement with one of the prettiest Romanesque chapels you're ever likely to see (1, 2,) and some quite extraordinary Gothic murals (weekdays only).

There's a very nice bar in the village where we can either take a snack or, if you tell us in advance, have a superb traditional-style meal with excellent local ingredients and wines.

Next stop is another small settlement with a rather pretty church and usually a couple of elderly market gardeners to talk to, followed by an optional visit to the remains of a Republican Civil War airfield and air raid shelter.

Then a hill-top shrine with glorious views over the country, and down a country track into Vilafranca, the beautiful small town around which the local wine industry is based.

If you want to see the markets in Vilafranca and don't want to get up too early, we can do this walk in reverse.