The Fold Up Bike Trip

Day 12
Wednesday 24.06.09                   Collioure to La Fresneda              300 miles

Awake at 7.00 am and packing. It will be a long day today but first, a tick in the ‘life’ box. 12 years ago I sat outside a cafe in Collioure having coffee. 2 Swedish bikers turned up and sat near me. They were touring France and Spain. I silently vowed to myself that someday I would return here on a bike tour. 6 years of biking and all that has happened in between and here I am having breakfast in the sun. A Big Tick in a Big Box. Now I’m off to Spain!

Down towards Barcelona and then turning inland towards central Spain. Fantastic roads through the (Catalan) mountains. Lunch is in a sleepy town called Manresa. Time to get stuck in. Lots of miles to do. Over the hills and out onto the famous ‘Plains of Spain’. Yes, they are flat! Its getting hot, 33 degrees on the gauge so I stop a few times for a drink of water. No sense in looking for shade, there is none. Soon I am back in the foothills and nearing my destination. I turn into a village and take the proverbial ‘wrong turn’. Disaster! Uphill to a dead end. I’m in a small, grassy area outside a factory. Its full of humps and hollows with hardly enough room to turn the bike around. I think we are going over ......

I manage, I don’t know how, to get it onto a concrete ledge barely big enough for the bike. I kick the sidestand down and find there is a big gap underneath it. Quickly I whip off the tank bag and kick it under the stand. It’s just enough to allow me to jump off and get it onto its centre stand. I take off all the luggage and get back on. I’m looking at a 2 foot drop off this ledge onto a gravel track, and a sharp right turn back down the hill, oh well, if I drop it at least I’ll be pointing the right way!

Start the bike, slip it into gear, stare at the drop. Bugger It! I dropped the clutch and flew off the ledge, skidded sideways, held it upright and came to a stop at the bottom of the hill. To this day, I will never know how I did that!

It took me an exhausting half hour to get my luggage from the top of the hill and fix everything back on the bike. So I set off again to look for the campsite. I knew it was ‘off the beaten track’ but did it have to have a gravel track, uphill, a mile long.

An extremely hot and frazzled biker was greeted with a free glass of San Miguel by the site owner, a Dutch woman called Jet. She gave me an A4 folder with loads of info about the site and surrounding area and I ordered a plate of cheese and cold meat with bread (£8) for supper at 8.30 pm.

Pitched, showered and refreshed I turn up at the bar terrace and order a beer. The other owner, a man called Joost, serves me my supper. 2 enormous plates of cheese and meats with bread soaked in tomato. It could easily have fed four people. I wade in but hardly make a dent in it. Joost offers to put it into the fridge for tomorrow nights supper. I order a couple more beers and turn in for the night.
Tomorrow is a day off, perhaps a walk in the hills ......

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