‌Thursday and the drive to Spain across the Pyrenees, although we were already at a height of 700 metres at Ax les Thermes. I remember Graham saying “Take the caravan across the Pyrenees, you must be joking!” and so here we are. We hitched up the caravan and drove up the wooded steep sided valley with hair pin bends for about half an hour and then through a 5 Km tunnel coming out the other side near the border town of Puigcerda, just into Spain. The valley opened out here and we continued to drive towards another range of mountains and through another tunnel and then onto a very quiet, new looking motorway, which took us all the way to Barcelona. After a couple of hours we could see another mountain range in the distance, which looked very steep and jagged. According to the map this was a national park of Montserrat, whose name seemed familiar to me. We pulled in at a deserted service station which was like a ghost town with all the buildings shut up and the petrol station abandoned, but with a good view towards the mountains in the distance. We ate our picnic lunch and then travelled on, the road getting much busier as we drove through cities on our way down to the coast. We turned off before we got into Barcelona to go to a town about half an hour north along the coast called Mataro, and a campsite just north of the town.

I looked up Montserrat and it is a British Caribbean Leeward island, which is where I had heard the name before. The link is Christopher Columbus, who named the island after the mountain range back home in Spain. Apparently the volcano on the island erupted in 1995 and over half the island became uninhabitable, causing a lot of people to leave, there are less than 6000 people who still live in the north of the island.

Friday

A slow day today, sitting in the sun, reading, writing, sewing, downloading photos, a few jobs. Drove into the town later on and had a walk on the beach although dogs are banned from most Spanish beaches until 30th September but there were few people about. The N11 busy road runs in front of the campsite and then there is the train line right on the coast, which goes from Barcelona to Girona. It took us a while in the town to find the underpass that you can drive through to get to the promenade and the beach. We arrived back at the campsite to eat in the restaurant just as the storm which had been threatening all day broke, spectacular lightning, a little thunder and eventually heavy rain.

Saturday

We drove into Mataro again this morning to find the park. Despite the campsite being dog friendly, there don’t seem to be many places to walk a dog except sandy tracks right next to the trainline ( no security fences or barriers of any kind) or alongside dusty farm fields with tractors buzzing around. We were woken up yesterday morning at 6.30am, before the sun was up by a farmer spraying his maize crop next to us, it sounded like a  helicopter about to take off. Graham took Ellie for a run round the park and I walked into the market to buy some fresh food, getting completely lost on the way back to the car park and keeping them waiting. We then drove round to the beach and went to a restaurant on the front that didn’t seem to have any signs or menus up but looked ok and we were confused about where several places were that we had been looking for. Anyhow we had a really nice lunch of paella.  All this area is very much Catalan, the yellow and red flag is everywhere with Catalan being the first language and Spanish second.

Sunday

We had come here to visit Barcelona and especially the amazing Sagrada Familia cathedral. When we arrived at the campsite on Thursday and checked in, there was a notice up saying there were no tickets available for Friday, Saturday or Sunday as it was fiesta weekend. All tickets were free and of course had all already been prebooked for the next three days. We debated whether to stop till Tuesday but discovered that there were only tickets after 4pm on Monday and it would be difficult to leave the dog in the caravan for the afternoon and evening. We decided to go anyhow into Barcelona on the courtesy bus at 9.15am on Sunday and try and get a train back mid afternoon, which we did. We seemed to spend a huge part of the day travelling, bus, then tube, tube, sagrada, tube, lunch, tube, train, taxi but it was amazing as always. We only saw the outside of the cathedral but they are still making huge progress with new parts being added since we were there last December. We went down to the beach for lunch and there were hoards of people, street sellers and market stalls, interesting buzz going on everywhere. When we got back to the caravan mid afternoon, Ellie was pleased to see us but had obviously had a snoozy day on the bed in the caravan. A lot of travel and a busy day and a reminder of how long it takes to get around the city. Packing up and moving on again tomorrow after our brief interlude in Spain.