Life in retirement is no longer a race to be run; we’re enjoying just idly wandering and jogging along.
In the morning Eileen looked a bit sad; the rain had turned her dusty exterior to a grubby smudge and the patio was a muddy sodden bit of plastic. Time to move on back to Spain. We headed south, on yet another route full of hair-pin bends, with the few straight bits giving only a bit of relief as we passed through the towns of Port Vendres, Banyuls-sur-Mer and Cerbère. We crossed the border with no fanfare, apart from a “Buenos dias España” from me. Next, we passed through Portbou, Colera and Llanca, all of them joined by lovely coastal scenery and yet more hair-pin bends. When we reached Portlligat, we parked Eileen and strolled downhill to the waterfront.
We queued for tickets to the Casa Museu Salvador Dali, only to find there were none left for the day and fifteen people were already on the waitlist for any cancellations. The first tickets available, which we snapped up, were for 12:50pm tomorrow. So after a short stroll around we walked back up to Eileen and checked in to Camping Cadaqués opposite the car park. We had a chat with the Cornish couple parked next to us and while Rodney got Eileen settled, I cooked up a late chicken and veggie lunch.
We now had the whole afternoon and evening ahead of us so, having had no internet for the previous two days, I switched on the laptop; I could use the time to get photographs, emails, writing and the blog up to date. But, expletives galore, the laptop was unhappy. We couldn’t open Photo Gallery, or Outlook. Windows Update wouldn’t work and we were frustrated beyond angry. Nearly two hours wasted and nothing resolved, so we wandered down the opposite hill in to Cadaques. Today we had a longer slower stroll around a town that was far less crowded than a week ago. It felt very quiet and relaxed, though not quite as pretty with an overcast sky and the water looking steely grey. We sat in a bar on the waterfront and watched the world go by. Well, only this little world, as we had no idea what was going on in the real world.
On Wednesday morning more time was wasted on trying to work out which bits of our laptop were unhappy and which bits might still be working. Mercifully, we could still watch DVDs, our only in-house entertainment. But the emailing was out of business and we could no longer keep our virus protection up to date. Putting the blog together with photos, was going to be one helluva task and internet surfing was out of the question without any security. Dang and double dang!!!
At 11:15am we checked out of the campsite and drove down to the car park in Portlligat. We found a nice spot in the shade of a tree for a cold drink and found ourselves listening to a man playing beautiful songs on his guitar, no loudspeaker to distort it and no back up drums etc. With only five minutes left before our allotted time to enter Salvador Dali’s house, I just had to go over to Mr Guitar, François Djaniguian. I didn’t want to create a break in the lovely melodies, but I wanted him to know he had calmed our anxieties and warmed my cockles. I also had to buy his CD. We played it later as we drove away from Portlligat and it was pure serenity.
Dali’s house, on the other hand, was the opposite, although the views from the windows are stunning. The guide insisted that the house was left exactly as Dali had it when he moved to his castle in Pubol. He certainly lived amongst some strange and curious ornaments. A stuffed bear covered in whacky adornments and holding a rifle, stuffed swans, an arm coming out of the wall holding little flags, even a tiny cage for a cricket…he liked the sound?!! It was all so fascinating to wonder at how his mind actually worked.
Outside on the patios and in the garden, there was still more charisma in the form of more eggs, a giant sculpture of a man laid out amongst olive trees composed entirely of builder’s rubbish and rocks, huge silver heads and Michelin Men; remember those? Apart from all the fascinating fun and frivolity of it all, I could very happily live in the bones of the house, it was enchanting.
As we passed by Roses on the way inland, I felt sad knowing that we wouldn’t be seeing the sea again for a long time. I have really relished spending so much time so close to the sea and of course the near perfect weather has made campervan life so easy to enjoy. But the failure of our laptop and the knowledge that continuing our blog would now be far more difficult, was also making me sad. I feel like a painter who has broken his favourite brush.
So we made the decision to hole up at the next campsite for a couple of days. We stocked up on supplies near Figueres and drove out into the hills to Camping Les Pedres near Capmany. The ACSI book quoted ‘Highly recommended’ and there were award stickers on the campsite reception window. What we found was a rather dusty, tired and mostly empty campsite. Only two showers were unlocked in the Ladies and only one of them worked properly. The electricity supply was only 6amp and we immediately fused the first point. We then managed to fuse the second point numerous times, but at least we could reset that one each time the kettle tripped the fuse. Neither of us felt like cooking, so we ate ripe juicy honeydew melon with jambon, whilst another storm rumbled over the mountains in the distance.
The only thing to disturb our anticipated early night was the bell on the local church tolling eleven, very slowly. Less than a minute passed and there were another eleven clangs. Perhaps there are two churches in the tiny village, though strangely I only heard twelve o’clock ring once……?!
And so Thursday became a day filled with three loads of washing, a thorough exterior wash and polish for Eileen and seven hours for me struggling with the computer and coming to grips with the problems of publishing any more entries on the website. This may be the last entry for a while, as I’m not really sure that I want to spend three hours or more every day, trying to keep it going. We’ve decided to leave here tomorrow, head in to the Pyrenees and have a think about it on a mountain top somewhere.
