Saturday, 1 May 2010

Day 4 - Viva la Spagne


It was the hottest, coldest, clammiest, most uncomfortable night I have ever had.
Zipped up inside the hammock to keep the mozzies out, the fabric falls back and lies on your body. The mozzies drill straight through the fabric.
They also drill through the bottom of the hammock.
I was trapped inside my nylon tomb, zip fully zipped up, sweating and suffocating but I could hear the swarms right next to my ear through 0.25mm of nylon. The only way to keep the fabric off my face and arms was to lift it up with my toes. They were drilling into my big toes, but it was the only way.
I tried to spread my sleeping bag around inside to create pockets of space that I could hide in and not get bitten.
Glenn by this time was out like a light. Sounding like a cross between a chainsaw and a man being garroted.
He was supposed to be keeping watch on the bikes, one of the french pikeys could have rolled up in a transit van, chucked the bikes in, chucked him in and driven off and I doubt he would have noticed.

We got up in the morning, it was still, dark and 'extreme packed'.
Basically ramming everything into our packs as quickly as we could, we didn't breakfast, (we were breakfast), we didn't make tea, we didn't make a sound until our lids were on and Bewley gave the thumbs up that he was ready (by comparison we normally 'quickly' pack and it takes around an hour. Today we were ready for the off comfortably within 15 minutes from waking.
With the mozzies up to full chat, fired up the bikes and raced for the campsite entrance.
There was a lone security dude sat in the reception, with the door open and the security barrier down.
I swerved around it, Glenn got a bit hooked up on it as his panniers hang out a bit.
We basically wheelspun out and ragged the shit out of the bikes for the 5 or so miles down the road to get away.
Result.
No pay.
And no one giving chase.

A cup of coffee 20 minutes down the road was like heaven, it felt sort of......civilised, even though we looked and smelled nothing of the sort.

We passed the Spanish border and the sun was out, beautiful.
I nearly had Glenn off his bike a few times. every time I stopped he nearly rammed me off the road, cursing in my lid "Jesus, will you bloody concentrate!"
Was only when he later said "is your brake light broken?" that I took it all back,

We headed off towards Tosa Del Mar, and I swear the no matter what Top Gear say, THAT is the best bit of road in Europe.
We had 30 or 40 minutes of undisturbed hairpin after hairpin round the coast hugging the mountain cliffs with no traffic. It was brilliant, I just wish the bikes weren't as loaded and we could have had a right good hack.

Got to Calallevado and stopped at Lloret. The sun was beating down. We showered and got supplies (beer) and spent time on the beach. Later we planned to get the map out, plan the next few days, but ended up getting mashed and lighting a fire instead.
Some Spanish kids came to the campsite and started making loads of noise.
I don't remember much, except that after proudly announcing to Glenn that I have never fallen out of my hammock, promptly fell out twice, much to Glenn's amusement.
And I didn't fall gently either, when you're that drunk, you tend not to have the reactions to try to save yourself.
I fell on my head.

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