Barcelona, Spain—UPF-Spain’s 2018 Peace Road event was a climb to the beautiful Valley of Nuria, 2,000 meters above sea level.
The UPF supporters invited a few guests to the September 30 event: some Ambassadors for Peace, family members and friends, and also an artist who exhibited her paintings in the Ronda Barcelona arts center this year.
The idea was to go up to the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Nuria, located in the Valley of Nuria, which is 2,000 meters above sea level and is accessible only by foot or by rack railway.
A total of 65 people participated in the Peace Road event: Fifty came from Barcelona by bus (a two-hour drive), a few others came by car from the Catalonia region, and there was a group from the neighboring nation of Andorra.
We met together in the village of Queralbs, the starting point of the climb, at 10:00 in the morning. The climb is almost 8 kilometers (about 5 miles), with a drop of 900 meters (nearly 3,000 feet), and it takes around three hours to arrive at the Valley of Nuria. The weather was very nice, not too hot or too cold, and without rain.
Most of the participants went by foot, although a small group took the rack railway. Even though the way is quite difficult to climb, we had children from 6 years old who did it. Some people took longer than three hours, but everybody was so happy to arrive at the sanctuary. Overcoming their limitations and helping one another created a real sense of a big family.
After taking picture and having lunch together, it was time to go back, and most of the participants needed another three hours to return to Queralbs.
It was a very long day, but everybody enjoyed the feeling of doing something to bring a better world of peace. Peace Road is a very good program to which to invite people from different ways of living and thinking.