Leave your cell phone behind, lock it up and forget about everything. In a world where ignoring a smartphone is impossible, the privilege is to abandon it for a while, and that’s why we went for a few days to Unplugged, a cabin hidden in the Pyrenees and only an hour from Barcelona, where the main objective is clear: to disconnect for a few days from the screen.
Unplugged is an English company that has now arrived in Barcelona. Its concept is already indicated by its name: to offer places to disconnect (unplug, in English). To do so, they have several cabins that share some essential characteristics: being away from everything, having little or no coverage, being self-sufficient and being ready to live for several days totally disconnected from the world.
To stay in them, once you have made your reservation, all you have to do is take the car and drive an hour from Barcelona, go around a thousand curves and reach the deepest part of the forest. There, in the green mountains of Milany-Santa Magdalena and Puigsacalm i Belmunt hides a cabin ready to make us forget the cell phone for a few days.
The cell phone kept under lock and key
Unplugged’s cabins are ready to disconnect. Coverage is fair and the first thing you do upon arrival is to follow some instructions that we will have had to download in order to get down the dirt road to the cabin grounds.
Once there, in a clearing open to an impressive viewpoint over the valley and the forest, stands a small cabin. Inside, a box with instructions to disconnect from everything and four basic accessories to live these days: a map, a compass, an analog camera and even a Nokia cell phone for emergencies. But the most important thing: a padlock that will allow us to leave our smartphones in that box and lock it so we can’t open it again until we leave.
And from there, to enjoy the disconnected life, in a cabin prepared for it. There are board games, a wood stove, loungers in the garden to read with views of the valley and even a Polaroid to leave some memories on paper. Onefrom falling asleep looking at the fire in the fireplace to waking up surrounded by sheep grazing in your garden, as the cabin is on the grounds of a working farm.
Afterwards you can have breakfast with breathtaking views of the castell del Mir, then spend the day reading without thinking about much else. Otherwise, you can take the map for a walk to the waterfall, prepare something tasty in the kitchen and finish the day recovering the board games in front of the flames of the stove.
All in a self-sufficient hut that is powered by sunlight and has a dry toilet, so that the impact is minimal. The cell phone, in fact, can hardly be charged and the water is heated by a heater that must be activated each time.
In short, an almost complete disconnection that can end with a beautiful sunset over the mountains, reminding us how beautiful life was when we did not depend on a screen.
Of course, the disconnection has a price: the Unplugged cabin in Barcelona has a price of 540€ for a three-night stay. From this point on, one appreciates how much it is worth to leave the world aside for a few days.