A tree top hotel

Being an astronaut, deploying superpowers and having a tree house. There are things like these that you want as a child and the elders enjoy. “To have a treehouse….”, Emmanuel Grymonpré and Karin Van Veen, the developers of the Cabanes als arbres Hotel stood scratching their heads. And in a leafy forest in Girona, in the heart of the Montseny mountain range, they decided to make their dream come true: accommodation 100% natural high up among the leaves.

The more than ten years that Grymonpré spent as a guide in the Venezuelan forest and both of their experience in adventure parks were sufficient for the initiative to bloom. Cabanes als arbres is a complex of ten hotel cabins conceived for breathing nature at altitude, for feeling rustic well-being and having a different experience.

The romantic 30-metre huts hang above the heads of the walkers for camouflaged customers are hardly noticeable in the forests around Sant Hilari Sacalm in the Guilleres area opposite the Montseny mountain range and in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Between four and seven metres up, with a terrace, feather blankets and everything you need to feel the comfort of a mountain shelter, but hanging in the air.

“If you know trees, you realise that working with the living tree is a fantastic option”, says Emmanuel. “We wanted cabins that were 100% rustic and 0% chemical”. The simple arrival at the place already marks the difference. The Masía la Vileta, a 14th century country house is used as a reception. From here guests walk for between two and twenty minutes to reach their hotel nest, lost on a solid trunk anywhere in the forest. Natural Douglas fir, beach, chestnut woods or fir and cane linings make up these floating houses. If we are going to be purists, there is no running water or electricity. Minimum urbanity and maximum care, the perfect place for a romantic evening.

La Vileta for the shower, the dining room and the chimney. In the cabin the magic of seeing the night in the candlelight, of drinking from buckets and making do with little lamps. In the morning, at nine on the dot, breakfast is sent up to the window in a bucket. Dreamy details such as the hanging bridge and the stairs leading up to each cubicle.

Grymonpré and Van Veen say that they were seeking to create a space of “freedom and intimacy”. A place to wake up to nothing but the birdsong, the mountain air and “the bluest sky you can imagine”. This is why they decided to make every child's dream come true in a gift for adults. A unique hotel experience. The new reality, naturally.

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