Coll de Nargó is a small village in the Segre valley, in the pre-Pyrenees of Lleida, and it has two very different claims to fame. The first is the church of Sant Climent, a small Romanesque church with a tall, slender bell tower dating back to the eleventh century, one of the finest examples of early Catalan Romanesque architecture. The second is much older: the hills around the village are one of the richest sites for dinosaur eggs in Europe, and the Dinosfera museum explains how the area was once a nesting ground for large plant-eating dinosaurs, about seventy million years ago.
The village sits at the point where the Segre emerges from a narrow gorge, and the landscape around it is spectacular, with red and grey cliffs, terraced hills and forests of pine and holm oak. To the south, the river has been dammed to form the Oliana reservoir, and the main road, the C-14, runs along the valley from Oliana north towards La Seu d'Urgell and Andorra.
For riders, Coll de Nargó is famous above all as the start of the road over the Coll de Bóixols, the L-511, which climbs west from the village through a series of tight bends and gorges to the pass and then descends towards Isona and Tremp. It is a fantastic road, narrow and twisty, with spectacular scenery and very little traffic, and it is one of the best-loved motorcycle roads in Catalonia. The surface is generally good, but there can be gravel and rockfall, especially after storms, and the bends are often blind.
The village has a few restaurants and bars, serving hearty mountain food, such as cured sausages, grilled meats and trinxat, a dish of cabbage and potatoes. It is small, with only a few hundred inhabitants, so for fuel it is wiser to fill up in Oliana or La Seu d'Urgell. Summers are hot and dry, and winters can be cold, with snow on the higher roads. Spring and autumn are perfect.