If you get bored just open your eyes
The main road north was only a couple of kilometres from the campsite and we were zooming up it. Okay, not exactly zooming, more like tootling, but at least it was a straight road and Eileen seemed happy with that. Except, she wasn’t completely happy. When we initially set off, Rodney had discovered a small hole in the exhaust pipe; it was puffing smoke on his ankles as he had climbed in to the driving seat. So we stopped at a large outlet shopping centre at La Jonquera and, while I checked out Mango and Desigual, Rodney put a bandage on Eileen’s pipe. Unfortunately we didn’t have a baked beans tin to wrap around it as previously recommended by Terry, but he did a good job without one. Back on the road north, we were definitely feeling a sense of déjà vu. We’ve been up this road before. We crossed from Spain back in to France, but this time, when we reached Le Boulou, we turned west and headed for the hills.
Cerét claims to grow the first and the finest cherry crop in France, so to check out that claim we bought a kilo and yes, they were pretty good. The town also claims to be the place where artists first developed Cubism at the beginning of the 20th century and the town features in many paintings by Picasso, Dufy, Braque, Chagall and others. The weather was a bit overcast and gloomy, so we only wandered around for a short while and then picked a small restaurant, Quattrocentro in the Place des 9 Jets, which basically translates as the plaza with a fountain that has nine spouts, which it did…. We’re still in France, so why not eat pizza? Trouble is, the entrée was so huge, the pizzas turned out to be huge too, bread was included and so was the raspberry gateau dessert; we over ate on a grand scale.
From Cerét we continued west, following and criss-crossing the Ter River, aka the Têt, aka Tech, aka Tec; seems to be a river suffering an identity crisis. Then again linguistically, we are now struggling with Catalan, French and Spanish around here. We both really admire all the people we meet who speak so many different languages and seem to do it so easily.
We were wondering, where would we sleep tonight? Will it be France, or will it be Spain? As we approached Prats de Mollo la Preste, the grey threatening skies finally gave way and for the first time in ages, we were driving in heavy rain. After passing the city walls and the castle at Prats, we found ourselves climbing through the clouds and as we approached the Col d’ Ares, re-entering Spain for the third time, the sky lightened and we found ourselves looking down on the clouds swirling about below us. We could see around us, but sadly nothing but white fluff below. Curiously, on the last hairpin bend, our GPS announced “turn left” as if there was anywhere else to go and then ”traffic ahead”. What?!!!! We hadn’t seen a car for ten kilometres!! We never did find another car, maybe the GPS was counting the cows in the fields beside us. Dropping down in to Spain, the clouds cleared and the sun came out again. The greenery on the mountains all around us was so refreshing; I wanted to run in to the meadows and gather up armfuls of colourful flowers. Rodney sagely noted “it’s not so dusty here”. But I bet the raincoats will be dusty when we pull them out; now where did I stow them…………..?
We set up camp at Camping Vall de Camprodon, it rained in the night and the duvet was pulled out of the cupboard, where it had been hiding for a very long time.
On Saturday morning, we faffed with the computer a bit more and then walked the two kilometres into Camprodon. It’s a very pleasant town with a fabulous old bridge over the numerously named river and then having discovered the market is held on Sunday, we decided to make it three nights sleeping in Spain. So we spent the afternoon having a go at fixing the computer by following a YouTube video. The instructions did not quite marry up with our details, but for some reason after two reboots, it started working again. We updated everything, which then took hours, but as I type this, we seem to be up and running again….for now. Stay tuned………….
