Palavas les Flots, France

31/05/2010

Nothing particularly exciting about this place. Really just a place to stop for the night. Driving here was not particularly fun as it was high winds all of the way. You really feel the crosswinds in a vehicle like Skippy and it takes a lot of concentration not to get pushed into the next lane or into a barrier. The campsite is a bit creepy. I think we are the only people staying here who are under the age of 60 and not a couple who are blood related. (NB. Catherine's subsequent impression of a French redneck is brilliant. Make sure you ask her to do it for you). It's also a bit tired and crappy but apparently warrants security guards dressed in black wandering around the grounds. We took a short walk on the beach but just got sand blasted into our faces by the winds.

Near Torroella de Montgri

30/05/2010

After leaving Camping Barcelona on the 26th, we took a fairly short trip up the road to stay at El Delfin Verde, which is an absolutely huge campsite, for 5 nights. It's right on the beach and is a great place to do not very much for a while, which is what we've been doing for the last 5 days. El Delfin Verde has two bars, two take away food outlets, two gelati outlets, a creperie, a hairdresser, a performance stage, a mini-golf course, a huge pool in the shape of dolphin, a games room, a clothes shop, a newsagent/sports shop, a fishing lake, table tennis tables, basketball, tennis, badminton and volleyball courts, a bakery and a full sized supermarket. Plus at the beach there's another bar, another gelati outlet and 2 beach volleyball nets. Apparently some people stay for an entire season which is five months.

We haven't done a lot here, as planned. A lot of lazing around. Catherine thrashed me at mini-golf, thanks to me getting a 41 on hole 12, doubling exactly my total up to that point. I thrashed her later at pool. Last night some of staff put on a mini production of 'Grease'. This was just really about 5 of them dressing up a bit and doing some choreography to a backing track of the show. It's for the kids mostly, although didn't start until 10pm. We also had paella at the restaurant along with a bottle of house white. The paella was not quite what we expected as it was black. Cuttlefish ink. It was ok, though. The white wine was the most vile we've ever had and not particularly cheap at that. It tasted like vinager that had old bootlaces soaking in it. Will stick to good quality el cheapo vino from the supermarket from now on.

It's been a good rest and tomorrow we're off back into France.

Mataro, Spain

25/05/2010

We explored Barcelona today, after getting a free shuttle bus from the campsite into Mataro and then a train from there. We didn't really have a lot planned but bought some all day tickets for the Metro and saw a few of the sites including la Famiglia, Guil park and the Gothic quarter. We also took a ride on a cable car and wandered up and down La Rambla, the main pedestrian thoroughfare where you have plenty of opportunities to gawk at lame street performance artists, buy a live rooster or get pickpocketed. We only did the first one.

Seeing as today was our 7th anniversary of going out, we stayed out for dinner and had tapas and some mammoth glasses of sangria. Amazing tapas. Ate far too much, though.

Mataro, Spain

24/05/2010

Not an auspicious start to the day. We were ready to go pretty early, setting off for Barcelona. The car battery had other ideas. Flat as a tack. No doubt as a result of a couple of short trips and the miles of downhill from a couple of days ago. However, we had a spare battery. What we didn't have was the right sized spanner to get the current battery out. Luckily, I found a cheap wrench at the local garage. That also didn't work but I ended up just pulling the battery out of its supports.

Of course the spare battery was flat, too. As was the leisure battery.

There was no room and we were not strong enough to push Skippy for a clutch start, so we rang once again the trusty RAC breakdown service. Or not so trusty. Apparently, you only get one breakdown per trip. This is outrageous. We brought 3 months cover so we expect 3 months flipping cover. We'll be having words with RAC.

We rang up a local breakdown service, who wanted to charge 100 euros to come out. Declined. There was no-one else around camp and reception was shut so, in the absence of anyone to jump start us, I set out to buy another battery or a battery charger. No chargers for sale and the cheapest battery was 62 euros, so I went back to campsite to think of something else.

In last ditch attempt, we hooked up the car battery to the leisure battery slot and flicked on the charger from the mains. After about 20mins, I put in back under the hood and Hooray!, we had success and were quickly back in the road, although a few hours later than expected.

Two lessons: 1. Always make sure you spare battery is charged. 2. Don't automatically believe a mechanic who tells you that your leisure battery charger doesn't work.

We were heading for a campsite called Camping Barcelona, which was actually a bit north of Barcelona in Mataro. We didn't have the exact address for the campsite and spent an entertaining couple of hours driving and then walking around Mataro looking for tourist information office to help us. The tourist information office was shut (of course) despite it being a couple of hours before closing time. 'Fiesta', we were told by a couple of likely gentlemen who were hanging around the office doorway.

Cleverly, Catherine noticed a little tent sign on a map just near the office and we took a punt on heading north. Very glad to see the sign to camping Barcelona a few kms down the road.

Canillo, Andorra

23/05/2010

Apart from shopping and skiing, the other main pursuit in Andorra is hiking so we decided to go for a bit of a walk up to Lake Juclar, which is the largest lake in Andorra.

The start of the walk is 3km off the main road backtracking a bit from Canillo. Skippy decided that the 3km was a bit too steep, winding and one lane-y so we parked him and walked instead. This added 6km on the round trip and was felt keenly on the way back. The start of the walk proper was up a gravelly road/stream, the road being a natural conduit for the snow melt of the mountains. After a short while we started encountering patches of snow on the path and then the path became more of goat track winding up between boulders. There were a few other hikers about but most of those had sensibly brought along hiking poles. Eventually we got a point where the path stopped and we encountered a long steep slope coverd in snow. Had to make decision whether to go on or not as we were not really kitted out for climbing up snow covered mountains. Eventually, common sense was conquered and we forged on. It was actually pretty scary. It's a bit hard to judge, but we think the slope was around 35-40%, which doesn't sound much until you're halfway up and look back to see the ground just fall away sharply. This is when you start thinking, 'Gee, if I lost my balance here and fell over, I'd go swiftly screaming down the hill until crashing into those pointy rocks at the bottom. And that would hurt. A lot.' Solution was to not look back.

On the plus side, the snow was quite soft so it was easy to dig in footholds. On the negative side, the snow was quite soft so every so often you'd sink up past your knees, making tough going. On top of that, little streams were undercutting the snow at various points so there was always a risk of breaking through it and twisting an ankle on a crevice in the rocks below.

Eventually, we made it up to the lake, which was still frozen over. Even though we were surrounded by snow covered mountains and sitting next to a frozen lake, it was still hot and good to have rest. The rest of hike was uneventful, apart from when I thought I heard a bear roaring close by (scary) and when Catherine dislodged a reasonable sized little boulder which then fell on and trapped her foot (quick thinking + strong husband + sturdy boot = no damage).

No trouble getting to sleep tonight.

Canillo, Andorra

22/05/2010

A brand new country! Sort of. Andorra not actually being a country, but a co-principality. The official language is Catalan, but French, Spanish and, to a lesser extent, English are also spoken. Not quite sure what to use for 'hello', 'goodbye', 'please' and 'thankyou'. Mumbling something under your breath seems to work as well as anything.

Andorra is right up into the Pyrenees, so we were a bit concerned about how Skippy would handle the climb. Or if he would make it at all. The road up is a series of steep hairpin turns and very few places to pull over. If Skippy decided to chuck another spark plug while halfway up a mountain...

Anyway, he did fine. Just very slowly. Thankfully for other drivers, there were passing lanes every so often so the bank of traffic behind us never became too long. However, constant revving of the engine in second gear for 30 or more kms was causing an interesting hot oil smell so we had a bit of break at Pas de la Casa. Also, I needed a bit of rest after wrestling Skippy around all those hairpins. No power steering.

Pas de la Casa, like most of Andorra, is set up for two things: skiing and shopping. The ski season was over (although we were still above the current snow line, and big piles of shovelled snow was still just lying about the streets) but shopping seemed to be in full swing. Andorra has very low (or no?) sales duties so is a popular place to buy booze, cigarettes and electronic equipment. One reasonabley sized store that we passed stocked, as far as I could tell, nothing but cartons of cigarettes, stacked from floor to ceiling.

Canillo is a much lower altitude than Pas de la Casa. Cue several kilometres of hairpins downhill on a 9% gradient, mostly in second or third gear, trying not to burn out the breaks. Cue also more traffic banked up behind us.

We are staying a Camping PLA which is a bit rundown, but pretty cheap and has free wi-fi. In the (unisex) bathrooms there is constantly playing one of Andorra's two radio stations (I don't know which) whose playlist consists of American pop in about equal proportion to Catalan pop. If no-one has yet every coined the phrase, 'that crazy Catalan pop music' then I would like to do so now. It's crying out for that description.

Tarascon-sur-Ariege

21/05/2010

Today was another chill out day. Slept in, did some washing. A little hut at the campsite had a map showing some walking trails in the area, some of which had contour lines worryingly close together. We chose one that was not so strenuous. It's lovely to be able to walk outside in sunshine and warmth. We had a drink at the campsite bar later that evening. Just one drink given the prices. Bizarrely for a bar in France, they didn't have any white wine.