August 25-28th Latour bas Elne to Mataro (Spain)

August 25^th

I’ve already written about the morning when we bought Di’s and my bike, and took the truck to the Fiat shop. But in the afternoon we headed to Argeles sur la Mer where we had seen in an advertisement, that there was a  British shop which sold British products, but more importantly had a English book swap area. It was the book swap which appealed, so we went laden with books we had read, Hilary begrudgingly ready to part with some of her well thumbed volumes, at the thought of something fresh.

There were plenty of options for Di and me, and we got a fair few volumes to read over the coming weeks. Unfortunately there was only one book suitable for Hilary and she had already read it (and had it I think), so she came away partly happy that she didn’t have to give up her books, but a little disappointed there weren’t any new ones to devour either.

August 26^th

Today we left Latour Bas Elne headed south for Spain. 
We drove down the coast to start with, past numerous pretty but over populated beaches, then the road took us inland a bit. We crossed the French/Spanish border up in the hills, nothing to show other than a Spanish flag wafting on the breeze if I recall correctly. There was evidence that there once had been a border guard/ front with now derelict toll booths and barrier arms to the sides of the road, but we just drove through with narry a backward glance. It is very interesting to those of us from an island state, this lack of border control. I know it makes sense when the whole area is one union as such, but it does make the laws for non-Europeans a bit obsolete. I mean we are only supposed to be in the scwheun (I can’t remember the name let alone the spelling) countries for a total of three months every six months. Well no one has  any way of knowing where we are (except those of you who read my blog when you are able to)  You may recall, we were never stamped out of England, so for all intents and purposes we are still there, not a problem unless we sneak back in there and are still there after our six month visa expires. However, since then we have been in France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, back to France and now Spain. We deliberately avoided Switzerland because they apparently have ferocious border guards who take money off you for the privilege of visiting their country, charge huge amounts for road user’s tax, and everything is exorbitantly priced. I digress again. We are in Spain, have no intention in leaving any time soon, but theoretically we should be out of here (and all of Europe excluding the UK)in the next few days. I guess if we keep our heads down, no-one really cares. We are helping their poor economies (which we read in the Daily telegraph yesterday are in for another hard time (or continuing recession over the next wee while) (though it does help our exchange rate).

Jumping (not quite over the border).

One of the seaside villages in Southern France/Catalonia

We took a side trip to Besalu which is a beautiful walled Roman village, with pretty and different bridges, arches, walls all prettily reflected in a little creek which runs beside it.

We wandered through the narrow streets looking at touristy things, music boxes, ceramics, postcards, mosaic bulls, donkeys, salamanders, cats, (you name it) and other pretty but unnecessary bits and pieces. There were also some stylish things which we thought were wonderful and would be lovely to have, but we resisted beautiful brightly coloured pottery, and toys for children. We did help Hilary out of a major crisis by buying her birthday present (yes, she’ll have to wait 4 ½ months before she gets it! Though she is trying all sorts of strategies to get it earlier! (which won’t work!). It is an exquisite pen (quill type) and ink and sealing wax set which hopefully she will get many years of joy from.

Entering Besalu

The walls enclosing the city

One of the alley ways (and two of the alley cats)

 While at the tourist information centre we discovered there was a miniatures museum in the village so we headed off there. They had three rooms, the first the models were 1:12 scale, they were miniature, the next room they were smaller and needed to be viewed through a magnifying glass  to see the detail, I’m not sure what scale they were, but it was amazing to think that something so small could be worked so intricately. I took a photo of an elephant on top of a long piece of wire, as viewed through the magnifying glass. I think the elephant was about one millimetre long in real life, really cool. The last room was what they called micro miniatures, they were unbelievable. They had to be viewed through a microscope to see the detail. What looked like a few fly spots on the eye of a needle turned out to be 12 camels in a camel train walking through the eye of a needle towards an oasis complete with palm trees and three people in Arabic dress, all perfectly formed. Other examples were a train with carriages going through the eye of a needle, the Eiffel tower, a decorated fly wing, and others. All, as I said, to the naked eye, just a dot. No photos of course, though I tried, you needed a properly mounted camera I just got a white circle with dark surround, doesn’t really show the true scene.

a 1:12 scale model of a florists

A smaller model through magnifying glass

The elephant significantly magnified

Besalu again

We had a camp spot all sorted, nicely picked out from our camperstop book  in a place called Fortia. It involved a bit of a detour, but it would be worth it for power, water, toilet emptying facilities, and a grassy space in a little agricultural village in Spain. Needless to say, could we find it? No! In the end Di went in to a bar and asked where it was, and the lady said “Nada” which we took to mean it had closed down. That happens a bit now, the book is 2011, but I guess by the time it is researched and then printed quite a lot can change, especially with the economic climate as it is. So we drove quite a bit further south to another spot in our book which we knew didn’t have power, but would do us for a night, in a little medieval town called Pals.

It said in the book, but I hadn’t registered it, that the spot was in the local police station car-park!!!! Well sure enough, it made it easy to find, because you just needed to follow the road signs pointing to the “Locale policia”- but it didn’t make for a quiet night. There were two young men who decided to make very odd noises for many hours at the beginning of the evening. At first I thought the police must have had a customer who had mental ill health in their keep, but it transpired it was just these two odd balls larking around. I’m not sure what time they decided to call it a night, well after midnight though.

Before we settled for the night (or tried to) we went for a walk around the village, very pretty with gorgeous walls and wonderful views out over the surrounding countryside. The scenes were made all the more spectacular by the gathering black clouds and golden light heralding the gathering of a thunderstorm which struck with magnitude shortly after we were safely ensconced in our campervan again.

View from the village of Pals looking over surrounding country side

Hilary hiding amongst the succulents

Tired out, ready for bed

One of the narrow Pals streets in the evening.

Having had a pretty rough sleep, with rain and louts we were not ready to be woken by the locals setting up a flea market in the adjoining car-park at about 6 the next morning. It was an experience however that made for good story telling. Lots of gypsy type people with all sorts of crap for sale, rather desperate looking vendors, but nothing I could bring myself to spend any euro on.  The same people obviously sell at this market each week, they have their systems going, emptying their dilapidated trucks/vans piece by piece and trundling over to their stalls, setting up and coming back for more. One woman obviously always used the parking place next to where we were, and the fact that we were there with our side on the white line and another car over the white line on the other side, she was going to park in her spot! Her van attested to her determination to park where she wanted, not necessarily where it was practical. It was dented and scratched all over so I watched on incredulously as she was guided by her man? A man? (over a long period of time)  into the space, with an inch on each side as she came to rest. No more scratches, I’ll give her that, but some of the dents in her van only served to aid her in the squeezing in process!!.

Needless to say, we didn’t stay in our car-park eating a leisurely breakfast, we were headed out to the next village, empty stomached by about 7.30. Our first stop was a little medieval village called Pertadella, the great thing about it was we were up before just about everyone else, and so apart from one other person taking photos, we had the place to ourselves, and so were able to have a relaxed and enjoyable poke around.

A view back at Pals, on our way to Pertadella

We spent an hour or so looking at the buildings, watching cats stretching in the sun, and breathing in the fresh air and peace and quiet. At one point a little dog started barking like crazy and looking skyward. We too looked up, out of his sight, a roof in the way, was what he obviously thought was a fire-breathing dragon, but we having the benefit of sight as well as sound, where able to recognize instead a hot air balloon, which was being kept aloft with periodic bursts of flame, it was that sound which had alerted the dog, and then his neighbours and so on, through the village as it passed by.

Early morning in Pertadella

One of the village cats

From Pertadella we headed to Girona where we spent the rest of the morning walking on the old walls, exploring a large food market, and being particularly grumpy with each other. I’m sure Girona had a lot to offer, but it won’t stand out in my memory as one of the highlights, merely because of the dark clouds we brought with us to the city.

Girona reflected in the river

The other side of the river

Walking up the steps to Girona Cathedral

A view over the city from the walls

Beautiful house

Another cosmic shot from the walls

Girona markets

Las Ramblas, Girona

The day did improve as we headed south along the Costa Brava. We stopped at a place called Blanes which unless you like over populated “resort” type towns doesn’t have a lot to offer. Perhaps that is a little unfair as all these beaches are beautiful with palm trees, golden sand, and blue and turquoise sea sparkling under blue blue skies and hot sun, but the crowds and chaos that go with them detract a lot. However the reason we detoured here was to see the Botanic Gardens that the DK book recommended. They are perched high on a cliff above the town, mostly arid condition loving plants but including many Australian specimens and a cabbage tree amongst the cacti and other succulent types. The gardens were worth seeing in themselves, but it was their position and the views from them which were the real draw-card.

We were aimed for a campground at Mataro about 20 minutes north of Barcelona on the coast. It looked great,  everything we needed, plenty of spots, close enough to Barcelona that we could drive in or possibly train in. and a reasonable price. It was supposed to be signposted but we couldn’t see any sign of signs, so stopped at the local police station. I stayed in the truck but the others came back with a tale of a gorgeous policewoman (number 47913 if you ever need help in Mataro), who was very smiley, incredibly helpful and had given really good directions (off the internet or GPS co-ordinates) and so we headed off. We followed her directions, getting closer and recognising the suburb/area sign but despite going in every direction off the last round-a-bout could not find the said place. We asked at the local garage and he too said it couldn’t be easier… we followed his directions, to no avail. We spent about an hour driving around in circles, re-tracing our steps, finding a place that sells campervans, but is closed, and had a picture of a campervan stop on it, but it had a different name. Finally I pulled over and spoke to another man, who spoke no English, but who looked at the entry in the book and made a door closing gesture with the car door. He said “si, si” when I said “closed”. Yet another non-existent camping site in our book. We spent the night parked on the side of the road in an industrial area, expecting at any moment to be accosted by either the good guys or the bad, and woke in the morning to the sound of gun-fire (I think possible shooting rabbits on the nearby waste-land, but I’m not exactly sure, we didn’t stay round long enough to check it out, but instead headed to Barcelona.