I went a bit harder than I intended today, but it’s probably good from a conditioning perspective which is not quite where I want it.
What a wonderful day. I started on the coast in Blanes and climbed up out of town. It was there I hit the wonderful theme of the day: compacted gravel roads. Instead of sticking to the main thoroughfare I was able to cut through. A bit of it was gnarly, especially some of the descents but doesn’t look like I captured those especially well.
Shortly out of town there were several small water crossings with sandy bottoms. While I didn’t get a picture I had to squeeze past a group of perhaps 25 school children on a wooden pedestrian bridge. I think they were bird watching. I made a supermarket stop and loaded up on water, canned fish, and fruit. I expect this will be my primary diet.
I then paralleled the main thoroughfare for a while before making it to Girona. In Girona I purchased an elusive travel adaptor at Corte Ingles. The waterways up until this point were nice but quickly became spectacular.
Leaving Girona there was a pleasant path that took me a ways.
This continued on eventually hitting a minor city. I turned off the path and towards a Castle. This lead to a cool, yet ultimately punishing gravel path.
I did not take many pictures of this and grinned through it. The descent had far too many close calls and I noticed I was becoming sloppy. While I’d been eating a d drinking, I unexpectedly hit a bit of a wall outside Figueres (20 km). I ate some crackers and took a direct path. At this point I’d conked due to the bad nutrition. I found a hotel for €30. When in town I talked to a fellow bicycle tourist from Rotterdam who gave me some potential ideas. He’s gone through the Massif Central in France and recommended against it because of the sparseness, but gave me some potential ideas for tomorrow.
Figueres happens to be the birth place of Salavador Dali. In addition to a museum there is much artwork throughout the city.
That was a matter-of-fact summary, but all-in-all, a delightful day. Tomorrow I head into France. One of the reasons I started in Spain is because my Spanish is good. My French is less so. I don’t expect it’ll be a problem but it’s another hurdle to jump. I’m finding travel problem solving that seemed daunting a couple days ago is finally starting to kickback into action like an old reflex.