Al's Travel Blog - Part 4

Friday June 6th 2008

With morning we come to a shivering start. There are huge puddles of water in the tent and very little remains dry. I'd dearly love to wake up furious and snappy but Claire tells me not to—she takes a couple of pictures as we pack up and we are setting off early enough that I don't mind anything and she has said that we will walk the (what we suppose to be) 13km to Sant Feliou de Guixols. This is a town that we have already given up trying to pronounce and are instead referring to as 'Felix'. Bloody English—they're rubbish abroad. The winding S of the highway starts to become familiar and we settle into the routine of walking. Occasionally Claire asks for some army songs and I remember a couple from Vietnam war films and Tim O'Brien novels and they get us to the small community (abandoned ghost town) of Canyet. We have covered most of what our days hiking should be and we walk downhill to the beach to eat and read through the heat of the day. I dry the tent.

Now would be a good time, however, to tell you one very important fact I have gleaned from hiking in my time: be suspicious of everything that goes downhill. Inevitably, you'll only have to walk up it again.

We make tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches and paddle in the sea. We are running low on sunscreen, and by the time we need to get going we're both a little burnt. And now we have a big uphill bit before we even get to the road. Biggest of all our problems, however, is that the cooler parts of the day are still very hot and we have no water. None. Claire is struggling upwards in the heat and I am getting angry.

"I told you we should have carried four bottles!"

"You can barely carry everything with only three!"

"I can carry anything and everything! I'm a superhero! I just need water."

"You're a dick."

"Yes, and a thirsty one."

Eventually, I leave Claire in the shade with the bags and I run up and down hills around the town looking for a shop. Naturally, there isn't one, and when I get back to the shade hot, sweaty, bothered and at one point chased by dogs and by now really, really mad at myself, Claire says she'll buy me dinner. I immediately perk up. The one restaurant in town is open and not serving until eight, another three hours away. So we sit and look at the sea and drink coke and take it in turns to go fill the bottles of water from the taps in the restaurant bathroom. Coke is a wondrous thing, restoring all our energy to us and we keep going in the fading sunlight, headlights flashing at us with smiles and waves from the host of motorcyclists that come zipping past. We wave back but try not to distract them too much—this road is strewn with memorials to motorcyclists who've not quite made some of the demanding turns along this stretch of the coast. We take a wrong turn off the road down a little path above Canyet but we neither of us mind and there is a little bench by the cliffside and we sit on it and I carve 'CLAIRE AND AL ON FOOT 2008' next to similar legends from the last eight or so years. Looks like my creative writing degree is getting more valuable by the second.

We walk, and keep walking, and Claire says that if we make Felix by seven-thirty she'll buy dinner. We still haven't made it but tells me I heard wrong and that if we make the town by eight we are going to a restaurant. We aren't going to make that, either, but then just after Felix adventure park a car pulls over. We' walk over to it and the two Spanish guys offer us a lift to 'Feliu' bus station and we gratefully accept. It's 5km more than we thought it would be. They take us to the station and drop us at the stop for Barcelona, recommending it thoroughly, and we have no Spanish to tell them it's very nice and we've come from there (or German, which surprises them greatly because my attempts to communicate in French led them to the conclusion that we were Germans—I shall never be proud of my French again.). So, we hide in the bus station until they've driven off and then walk into Feliu to find a restaurant. We eat cheaply at a wonderful place, and then we get to talking.

"I really can't be bothered with camping tonight."

"Me neither. Not with the 5k back out of the city, and it's too crowded to stay any closer."

"But if we get a hostel we don't get a full rest-day to regroup."

"Tell you what—I'll pay for tonight, you pay for tomorrow night."

"You're a bad man Hammond."

"I'm my father's son and born to a life of American luxury."

We track down tourist information but, like the two hostels we passed on our way from the restaurant (we feel bad, by the way, because we had to pay by card but when we tried to add a tip the lady thought we were complaining about the bill.) it too is closed. We ask at a hotel in the Placa Mercat (Market Square, check out my Spanish...) that is way too much but the receptionist directs us to the Hostel Zurich, right next to the museum, and we are thoroughly encouraged by how relaxed they are and their generosity. We take a room for two nights, and are shown up by an older woman who has leg problems and a formidable pair of spectacles, and she infact follows us up, calling out directions ("Up! Up mas! Now, Right!"). I think that before we had even reached our room she had adopted us as her token foreigners. In the room I have the best shower of my life because it comes with complimentary Aloe Vera to combat sunburn. Claire let me go first and I'm asleep before she gets out.