Day 17

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Day 17: Barcelona-Miravet

The day started well with an email from Lachlan, who had been incommunicado in tornado-strewn southern USA for a number of days. It turns out he made with friend Tom a not-well-publicized decision to go camping in the middle of nowhere, where they were apparently in no danger, except for the bear.

With directions from the ever-obliging hotel staff, we reached the southward freeway – well, tollway – with only one false start, and from there it was easy. After leaving the coast we passed through a succession of small towns and villages, each seemingly with more winding and narrow streets than the last. The village of Miravet was a fitting conclusion to this sequence: our otherwise extremely helpful landlord took a look at the Polo and judged that it would be navigable for the 200m trip up the steep hill and through the narrow tunnel that led to our lodgings. I can report that the tunnel, negotiated on about a 1 in 5 incline, at times left two inches of space beyond the wing mirrors on both sides. Scrape marks on walls at various points bear mute testimony to the efforts of people with wider (or crummier) cars, better insurance or more money. Combined with the foreign left-hand drive, this was a degree of difficulty I decided not to attempt again (and Helen’s not volunteering) after successfully getting up and down once. Thenceforth we have parked in the town square at the bottom of the climb and carried our stuff up the hill. The car’s clutch is grateful.

The house, though, is worth the climb. It’s partly set into the cliff, about 20m vertically above the river, and is constructed on four levels (we’re not using the attic, but that’s still plenty of steps). About half the rooms require me to stoop, and Helen too in two of them. The original bits are 16th-century, everything is slightly out of whack, but it’s an absolute delight: balconies (one with spa) on two levels with 200-degree views of about 50 km of river flat and the mountains beyond. There’s a Moorish church next door and an 11th-century castle on the mountainside above us.

For dinner, we went down in the afternoon to the town’s “supermarket” to get some supplies, but it closes at 1.30 pm then opens again from 5.30 to 8.30. Our first introduction to Catalonian time, which is apparently like other Spanish time but more so.

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