Wanderung 14

The Plane to Spain replaced by the Bounding Main!

April-May 2007

Day 17: Wednesday May 2 2007, Pineda de Mar, Spain

Noon position: 41 degrees 37.385' N latitude, 002 degrees 41.056' E longitude (Hotel Top Paradis Park, Pineda de Mar, Spain)

Bob:

The day dawned sunny and clear but noticeably cooler, so after breakfast we decided to use the opportunity by driving up the Costa Brava in the direction of the French border. The #734 National Michelin map of Spain and Portugal that we were using (1 to 1,000,000 scale) indicated scenic routes by a green stripe alongside a roadway, and we found that the green stripe just about exactly indicated where the scenic sections of a road would begin and where they would end.

The first scenic section in the direction of France was a coastal highway segment connecting Lloret de Mar and St. Feliu de Guixols. So we worked our way northeast from Pineda de Mar to Lloret, traversing innumerable roundabouts enroute, and started to drive the narrow, twisting coast road. It was so narrow and twisting, in fact, that although we had counted 11 tour buses on the stretch up to Lloret de Mar, there were none at all on the stretch from Lloret de Mar to St. Feliu de Guixols, which was a distinct relief because I had my hands full enough as it was. The road was consistently paved and had a center stripe, but that's about all I could say for it on the positive side. The road had no shoulders at all, low, flimsy, or non-existent guardrails, and traffic obstacles ranging from bicyclists chugging gamely uphill to an old guy limping slowly along in the middle of the right lane with the help of two canes. Avoiding these obstacles was tricky because the mountain reared up on the left side and the right side was typically a sheer cliff down into the Mediterranean Sea. So I learned very quickly to not drive faster than I could see ahead because I just never knew if some stationary or nearly stationary object would be right around a corner and I'd have to slam on the brakes.

Monika:

We had clear sky when we woke up. Unfortunately east was not over the Mediterranean but over some high-rises so sunrise was not as spectacular as I had hoped. After breakfast we decided to see more of the Costa Brava and headed north on the coastal road. For the first 20 miles it felt like A1A in Florida without the T-shirt shops. Especially Lloret del Mar was a typical tourist town, larger than I expected with lots of hotels, even a casino or two. But after Lloret the coastal mountains came right down to the Mediterranean and the road curved its way through the mountains.

Bob:

However, that all paled in comparison with the absolutely stunning scenery. I often felt as if we were suspended in mid air between the mountains and the deep blue sea. There were many wonderful vistas but I absolutely could not stop to take pictures except in the designated photographic pull offs. If you ever drive that road, make sure to drive it in the direction we did (toward France) because all those pull offs are on the right-hand side of the road and you just can't safely pull into them coming from the other direction. As luck would have it, we were going in the right direction and could pull over and take pictures whenever we saw the old-fashioned camera sign.

What we usually saw when we were able to pull over was a dramatic scene of the verdant mountains plunging down into the turquoise-colored Mediterranean Sea with a strip of light brown sandstone sandwiched in between. At either end of the scenic section we could clearly see where development was crawling up the hills in every direction, but the middle of the scenic stretch was mostly deserted. Although there were almost no beaches, we did see one small crescent-shaped beach in a deserted stretch that would have been just perfect for smugglers or pirates back in the Bad Old Days. The small town of Tossa was about in the middle of the stretch and had some kind of old fort or castle on the peninsula at the foot of the town that stuck out into the Mediterranean. I suspect that the castle may have been built to control the pirates and smuggling on this rather wild section of the coast.

Monika:

Every now and then an old-fashioned camera on a sign indicated a turn off for pictures. We took each one. For one, so that Bob could also enjoy the scenery, but of course also to take pictures. The cliffs reached down to the sea with small little coves in between, and you could almost imagine the pirate ships hiding out in any of them. The whole road from Lloret past Tossa to St. Feliu de Guixols was like this and definitely worth a drive. No tour bus can or did drive this road but we did pass several bicycles.

Bob:

To get to the next stretch of scenic coastal road further north, we first drove inland to Girona, picked up the toll road to drive north to Figueres, and then made a loop out to El Port de la Salva. The road out was C 260 and to get to the coast we had to once again wind around some small mountains. These mountains were covered in gorse bushes that were blooming a lovely yellow and the low, rounded green mountains with splashes of vivid yellow reminded me quite a bit of the hills of Ireland we had seen in Wanderung 9. The slopes of these mountains were also criss-crossed with crumbling terraces and old stone walls that again reminded me of the old pasture walls and abandoned towns we had seen in southwest Ireland. The terraces mostly looked like abandoned vineyards to me, although we also saw some new vineyards located on the valley floor.

I made it through the mountains to El Port de la Salva without incident although I was shocked once by suddenly encountering a tour bus coming in the opposite direction and making use of a goodly part of my lane. I scrunched the car over to the side as much as I dared and he crept by without scratching my paint, but it was an unpleasant experience and I had to be even more careful once I knew that tour buses might appear at any time. El Port de la Salva was a charming little community of low, whitewashed houses at the head of a small bay. What was clear from that vantage point was that the Pyrenees basically came marching strait down to the Mediterranean Sea at the boundary between France and Spain. There was one lowish gap through which they had punched the large toll road connecting the two countries, but otherwise the chain of mountains was unbroken as it gradually decreased in height from the fairly imposing mountains on the western horizon to large hills right next to the seashore.

Monika:

At St. Feliu we turned to the interstate to quickly catch another scenic stretch farther north. This stretch went directly through the coastal mountains. We saw a few terraced vineyards but even more stretches of carefully terraced land that was deserted. It reminded us of Ireland, where we also saw a lot of deserted land. The road ended at El Port de la Salva with a pretty beach. To the north and west we could see the Pyrenees and France. At this point, we decided, this was far enough and returned to the autovia for a quick way back.

Bob:

I was about done in with all the tense driving, so we curled back inland to the toll road and went shooting down that back to Pineda de Mar and our comfortable, relaxing hotel suite. I typed in my journal and Monika wrote in hers for a while just to unwind, then I napped until dinnertime. At the dinner buffet the potatoes and vegetables were way over cooked (English-style?) and the meat was tough and gristly, but that was really an advantage as it kept me from eating very much. I filled up on fruits and vegetables and Monika just had salad and some melon, so in the end we were induced to have a healthy, low fat meal. After dinner I read Dick Francis's "Second Wind" to relax until I could safely turn in for the night.

Monika:

It was 2:00 p.m. (we had had lunch at a restaurant on the autovia) and Bob had done a lot of very difficult driving rather superbly. So we came back to the hotel, where it was too cold to sit on the verandah but comfortable enough in our living room to write up the day's adventures.
Copyright 2007 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog Map of Cruise Map of Spain Epilog

April 2007
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30
May 2007
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31

Return to the Wanderungs Homepage.
Sign the Guestbook or Read the Guestbook.
Comments about this site? Email the Webmaster.
Contact Bob and Monika at bob_monika@hotmail.com.