Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Five days later than planned (but then I do not really plan, do I?) I left Barcelona, to set off on my biking trip. This I did towards the north, heading towards Costa Brava. Still within the city limits, there was a nice broad bike path and this brought me to a monument, Camp de la Bota, commemorating those 1,700 citizens executed by the Franco regime. From here on, the going got tough – the nice path turned really not very nice, it not being a bike road any, it was sometimes gravel, other times even something worse. Soon outside the city limits, I had the feeling of moving from a developed country to a third world one, the houses facing the sea were in such miserable condition. Strange. I was expecting a pleasant ride next to the coast, for a couple of kilometers, a bike bike path would appear, but it would end abruptly, having to continue on a busy, 2-by-2 lane major road.

After about 20 kilometers later, not really enjoying this ride, I got sick and tired of the traffic and decided to “cheat” and take a train. A lady at the station with the most wonderful handwriting started explaining my options in Spanish, all I needed to know was the next train, she wrote like a dozen different options. I ended up riding some 40 kilometers, from Vilassa de Mar to Blanes – sometimes regretting this option when looking out of the window, as some stretches were quite nice. Blanes is the beginning of Costa Brava, a stretch of the Mediterranean with rocky cliffs, hidden beaches, expansive (and expensive) white houses of (Russian) millionaires (we are yet far away from the aggressive attack against Ukraine). The “for sale” signs on the houses were first in Russian, then English, then Spanish – so a lot of dough is flowing (or was flowing) from the direction of Moscow.

It was quite a challenging ride given all the elevation changes and I often looked down to the wonderful beaches at the bottom of a steep cliffs, but somehow opted to ride on and did not jump in the sea.

The beaches within the town limits were surrounded by historic castles and towers. In a town, I climbed to the top of the hill, looking somewhat jealously at the beautiful mansions with amazing view of the blue water below. I spoke to some Swiss people, they mentioned spending 6 months in Switzerland, the other six here on the Costa Brava - not a bad life

Then, in Sant Antoni de Calogne, I made a sudden decision – I decided to make a turn towards inland, say good-bye to the Mediterranean . I honestly do not recall why I did this – probably I thought I had seen enough of Costa Brava, it was really nice, but there was quite some traffic and wanted more quaint places.

That afternoon I did not get all too far – in the outskirts of the town, there was a sign to a camping ground. I followed the path and found the camping called Pla de la Torre, run by an elderly Belgian couple. They were very friendly and we chatted for a while, as there were not too many guests around. I pitched my tent and dozed off.

Here you can see the trip in Google Maps, it was 64 kilometers of bike riding, with roughly 800 meters of elevation difference (40 km on top was done on train).