Les Cabanes

Inspired by Chaiselongue's blips of old buildings in her neck of the woods, this is the first in a series of cabana blips.

Cabanes are stone huts that were built by individual farmers for their own use for storing tools and drying crops, e.g. hazelnuts and almonds, and are local to the Terra Alta region of Catalunya, being part of traditional farming methods. There's more information here, but not all of the pages on the website will translate into English.

Building with dry stone is still practised today and the Fundacio el Sola runs training courses for anyone interested in learning how to do it.

The cabana I've blipped today is only a short walk along the ridge, and then down two terraces. It was a bit awkward to get a decent picture because of the olive trees growing in front of it, but you can see that at the back of the cabana to the right there's a sort of shelf, and to the left the entrance to a cisterna, where the rainwater running off the roof would have been collected.

There are lots of cabanes within easy reach of our house. Some are disused and left to fall down, but many are still in use and kept in reasonable repair.