We woke up before marc and his family at 7am and set off by 8:15am (skipping breakfast). This seems like a good method, to do 30km or so in the morning, heat, then have stop. Stopped right Camellera, after a friendly solo elderly lady biker suggested we’d find cafe there. Unfortunately they were out of pastries, so settled on a “jam sandwich” (in spanish “ham” is “jamon”, which very often mistakenly gets translated “jam”).
Continuing on, the route transitioned from bigger roads to smaller farm roads (strava heatmaps has been great for getting us on nicely paved, biker-friendly roads). It was another 20km to castello d’empuries, where got groceries for lunch dinner. At 65km we excitedly had lunch at castell de quermanco, the same place we stopped two years ago on our ride to london! We had a great feeling of nostalgia. I tried, but failed, to get the drone to follow me while I biked the steep final climb to the castle. At the castle we enjoyed some delicious ham, cheese, and tomato baguettes. Soon we hit the beautiful mediterranean, saw dozens of sandy beaches, starting in the town of llança, and saw tons of people, sitting under umbrellas and swimming in the water. Eventually we arrived at the town of portbou, filled our water bottles (3l + 1.5l 800ml x 2, probably excessive, but can’t remember how much we typically go through), and pushed towards the border.
At the border, we had a beautiful secluded campsite overlooking the ocean. Two separate police cars ended up driving right to where our tent was (along the dirt trail we had taken to get here). We acted very awkward, thinking we’d be in big trouble for illegally camping. It turns out they were more interested in finding illegal migrants. They they said didn’t know whether camping legal, but they didn’t have a problem it. One group of 3 officers even asked us to take a picture of them. We’ve now just had a rather odd dinner of pasta, lentils, sweet corn, sauce, fuet and are full to the brim, gazing over a spectacular sunset. The big climbs in the pyrenees commence tomorrow!
