When you get tired, just take the time to stop and smell the roses.
Rodney spent our 23rd anniversary morning cycling around Santa Margarida and Roses, while I tried to catch up on ‘stuff’. He came back with two tickets for a cruise up the Costa Brava coast. Nice. After lunch, we hopped on our bikes and cycled along the promenade to Santa Margarida to board the M.V. Don Pancho. There was a boat there ready to go, but the man on the gang-plank said this was a different boat and the one we had tickets for, should be parked next to them. It clearly wasn’t. 2:45pm came and went, the other boat left and cruised across the bay and we stood for a while wondering why all our plans seem to go wobbly lately. In the end, with no boat in sight, we left our bikes locked to the lamp-post and paced back along the prom to where Rodney had bought the tickets. Strangely, the lady there seemed to be very pleased to see us! I think she was happy that we hadn’t hung around waiting too long at the wharf. She put us in a car which whisked us around to the Roses wharf to board the M.V. Don Pancho. It turned out that because we were the only customers wanting to board at Santa Margarida, they couldn’t be bothered to come across the bay to pick us up!
So we did get to spend the afternoon rocking and rolling up the coastline. We passed Roses Port (we’ll come back to that later, literally), past Punta Falconera, Cap de Norfeu and El Bulli Restaurante at Cala Montjoi, which was for many years considered to be one of the best in the world, but it is now closed so no need to try and make a booking, Rodney. We rounded the very craggy Punta de la Figuera, which is theoretically the very eastern end of the Pyrenees. There are numerous caves under the cliffs and the captain drove the nose of the boat right in to the entry of one of them. I have to admit I was muttering “back up, back up”, as I watched the top of the boat edging so close to the rocky opening.
As we rounded the lighthouse, Cadaqués came slowly in to view. Lots of bright white buildings with terracotta roofs stretched around the narrow inlet; it was a lovely view from the water. The old fishing village is now a rather trendy but beautiful place, jam packed with eateries and boutiques right round the three sides of the harbour. You could fully understand why it attracted so many artists like Dalí, Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and Joan Miró. We had just one and a half hours to stagger around the sharp cobbled lanes, slipping sometimes on the steep parts and wishing we had a little longer to enjoy the village.
At 5:30pm, we boarded the M.V. Don Pancho for the cruise back up the coast to Santa Margarida and at 6:30pm, as we were approaching Roses, we were amiably informed that they did not want to take us across the bay to Santa Margarida and would we mind walking from Roses? We cheerily said that we did mind and I showed them the Bandaid on my foot. So they dropped all the other passengers in Roses and then we travelled with the crew back to Roses Port. The captain overheard Rodney explaining the berthing procedure to me and offered Rodney a job for the summer, which he politely declined; “it looked like too much hard work, despite being in a very pretty part of the world”……
Bougainvillea blossoming in Cadaques
Finally with the boat settled in the dock and all ropes tied off, one of the crew gave us a lift back to our bicycles in Santa Margarida and before returning to Eileen, we stopped for dinner and cocktails on the promenade at Emporda Restaurante. We ate far too much and then the sun settled down for another night.
And so followed two days of not a lot. One breakfast time, we watched a large snail move across our black plastic patio. Can anyone tell me what a snail’s movement is actually called? It doesn’t walk, fly, swim, or run. Is it a slide, or is it just a slither…? Also, how can you lose things in a campervan this small? It’s possible, because we’ve done it a lot this year. There are many hidey holes in Eileen and you can spend ages searching all of them. Luckily my anniversary card did turn up after only an hour of searching…… It’s quite funny the things one ponders about, when retirement creates more time to consider curious issues.
We spent a pleasant Monday evening chatting and drinking with Mick and Sandra from Nottingham. Many years ago, they had a trusty VW Autosleeper campervan, just like Eileen, but have now ‘traded up’ to a newer Fiat Ducato Savanah. But I have to say, I much prefer our snail home, it has a much nicer brighter living area. They kept topping up Rodney’s sangria with extra red wine from a five-litre plastic bottle bought from a local bodega. He did survive the evening. When they offered me a gin and tonic and produced a ten-litre plastic bottle full of gin, purchased from, goodness knows where, I was a bit taken aback by such a sight and felt it was safer to stick with my Bacardi….
On our last evening, we went for a stroll along the prom towards Roses and decided to stop for a nightcap. The waiter was a little too liberal with the Bacardi; it was 50% rum and 50% coke; looked more like a triple to me. He then plonked two bottles of fruit liqueurs on the table and two shot glasses. Rodney had the apple one and I had the melocoton. Gawd knows what was in there, I think I was more than drunk and I’m sure there were more than two moons rising………. As the song says ‘…..dear alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all……..’
