Day 1 Madremanya to Ceret

In typical Spanish fashion, breakfast wasn’t available until 9am so it was a late start to quite a long day. 

Fortunately the weather forecast was warm rather than hot and it was a beautiful, sunny morning. The route took us downhill to the Mediterranean near L’Escala where I remember having ice cream sundaes with sparklers on a family camping holiday many years ago. Today it was a coffee stop with a gorgeous view.



There was a bit of an evil head wind for the next 30km  with the mountains getting closer and closer.



The scenery was beautiful and the roads quiet as we started to climb.

Lunch was in the village square of Darnius with individual cardboard picnic boxes instead of a help yourself buffet picnic. The bike tour company is testing out the Covid protocol on this trip and so far it’s working really well. I really liked the prepacked bags of dried fruit and nuts, happily munching away as I go along, determined not to run out of energy.
The fuel was essential as we hit the first big climb of the trip.

I did my wheezing, spinning old goat impression with occasional pauses to bring the heart rate down to below vomit level, whilst Neil describes himself as a chugging diesel engine. Somehow it’s easy to forget just how hard long climbs are and it is impossible to train for a 53 minute climb in Cambridgeshire, but I did it and think I sort of enjoyed it!
The Spain/France border was at the top which was also where the tarmac ran out.

Apparently no one seems to want to maintain this route across the coastal Pyrenees and the first part of the descent was rather unpleasant. Fortunately the rest of the downhill was heaven on a bicycle, swishing past stunning views on a smoothish road surface with very few cars.

We were then very clearly in France rather than Spain with sculpted trees lining the roads as we approached Céret.

Céret is known for its modern art museum which has numerous Picasso paintings, but it is currently closed and we arrived too late to do any sightseeing before dinner. Happily we are now able to eat dinner at a civilised French time and I wolfed down a huge Caesar salad followed by my all time favourite - Poire Belle Helene.

That must be useful for at least one of the hills tomorrow!









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