From E to F

Platja Sant Sebastiá, Sitges

Fine day yesterday: Martyn treated me to lunch in Sitges.  After a modicum of research, I opted for a place on the Platja Sant Sebastiá, the Costa Dorada.  Lucky choice, I think, since on the larger beach to the west, a formidable array of amplifiers was being set up: the very thing we'd left the village to avoid.  We had a limited explore of Sitges before booking our lunch table, and spent a while sitting in a rare bit of shade, watching people enjoying themselves in the water.  There was a seasonal market going on along 'our' smaller St Sebastian beach front, selling some of the usual seaside tat, but also a lot of interesting baking, cured meats, odd handicrafts and odder teas (cannabis tea, anyone?). 

Awaiting birthday lunch

Lunch was good, and copious, and as the day was hot, I dozed on and off in the train on the way back to Barcelona.  When I was awake, I was rewarded with beautiful sea views: the return line is closer to the sea and goes through fewer tunnels.  We dined on a chicken Caesar salad in the evening, sourcing the components in the very handy Mini-Corte Ingles 20 paces from our front door.  Unlike in certain less religious countries, it remains open from 08:00 to 02:00, 7 days a week.  It also sells hot, fresh bread, except this morning, when we were looking for an early start.  Oh well.

Today we have returned to the village - just.  Our GPS lady, Dotty, managed to guide us out of Barcelona, but, once programmed to take us to the town closest to the border crossing we planned to take, she tried very hard to route us via two toll-charged sides of a triangle rather than along the direct route.  As usual we opted to Defy Dotty, and she fairly quickly caught on to the fact, recalculating without so much as a sigh.  But I'm convinced she's in the pockets of the oil and motorway companies.

The route was beautiful, though quite busy for the first hour or so.  The panoramas either side of the Coll d'Ares are wonderful: marginally more so on the south side.  Nothing that can be conveyed in a still photograph, of course.  You have to be there among the scents of the herbs and wild flowers, listening to the distant clanging of cow bells, and mentally mixing the colours of the mountains as they blue out into the distance.

We paused to have our sandwiches at a little recreation park near Le Boulou, watching people swimming and running (it was exhausting, I tell you...) while others boated in pedalo catamarans with built-in water slides.  Have I now seen everything?

I took the final stint at the wheel.  It was very nearly my final stint at any wheel.  As we batted up the A9 in rather blustery conditions, a truck I was about to overtake suddenly swung into our lane, and the ensuing panic braking took some hundreds of miles off the tyres.  The car behaved impeccably, I'm glad to report, as did the driver of the taxi behind us.  I hate to over-dramatise, but had we been a second or two further into our overtaking manoeuvre, it might have been our last.  All being well that ends well, we are safely home to find nothing worse following the rock festival than a pool of dried vomit a few paces from the front door.  So, with the larder stocked up, the tank refuelled, the shirts washed and drying and the bodies somewhat rested, it's time to patrol the village, possibly via the café de la Promenade.