Els Vilars, a short climb from Caldea's lagoons

Right behind Caldea, a stone path starts up the hillside and within minutes you’re among vegetable plots. It leads to Els Vilars. To my mind it’s the most rewarding short walk in Escaldes, because it begins beside the busiest attraction in the parish and gets you away from the traffic almost at once.

A hamlet within reach of the spa

Els Vilars is tiny, with no shops or cafés, and it keeps the rural feel the rest of Escaldes lost decades ago. What Andorra Turisme describes along the way are allotments, tobacco fields and bordes, the stone barns where livestock and hay were kept. With luck you’ll see a wood pigeon, grey with a dark band at the end of its tail.

There’s no list of monuments. There is one church, Sant Romà dels Vilars, pre-Romanesque and from around the 10th century, and next to it a south-facing viewpoint at 1,131 m.

Two ways up

Both waymarked routes begin at the same spot, the Camí de la Salita beside the Pouader car park and the Parc de la Mola square, next to Caldea. You cross Avinguda del Pessebre and there they split.

The short one, El tomb de Sant Romà dels Vilars, is 960 m with 93 m of climbing. It follows the Camí de la Font del Pui to the church of Sant Jaume and then the old stone path into Els Vilars. The longer Rumb als Vilars covers 3.5 km and 145 m of ascent, going up by the Camí de la Canya and the Camí dels Vilars and coming back by the Camí del Pou, about 100 m of road and the paths of Can Diumenge and the Font del Pui. Both are easy. I’d do the long one with a free afternoon and the short one if I had a Caldea slot booked.

What you see from the top

From the viewpoint, Escaldes-Engordany and Andorra la Vella fill the valley floor, and across the way you can make out the entrance to the Madriu. The trees are holm oak, oak, nettle tree and elm, more Mediterranean than alpine. The official sheet says you can carry on from there towards Can Diumenge and the Coll de Jou.

When to go up

There’s no real season here. The viewpoint faces south, and the official listing describes it as a place to walk in summer and winter alike, surrounded by greenery just a few metres from the town. I’d go up in the morning in winter, when the sun has warmed the slope, and late in the afternoon in summer. A few metres away is another balcony, the Sant Jaume d’Engordany viewpoint at 1,100 m, with similar views and the church rebuilt in 1992.

On the way down you can link up with Engordany and its heritage walk. For the whole parish, see my guide to Escaldes-Engordany.