A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
Date of event: 7/5/2009
I stopped for lunch around 12.00, I had to, I needed the fuel. I had snails and pigs feet in a nice little restaurant in Pont de Molins that specialised in such things. They were all very nice to me, putting the bike in the shade in the courtyard and bringing me lots of cold water to drink.
12.32 The last 10km had been not so nice, unless I'd wanted to take a detour the only way into Figueres was by the side of the N2, a major trunk road. Now although there was that nice little strip of tarmac the other side of the white line it was still noisy and unpleasant as large artics thundered by.
By now the heat was also moving on, inexorably, up the scale. What had been a just bearable 32°C was now nearer a melting 38°C. So, when I got to the tourist office to ask about campsites before cycling a way down the coast tomorrow I noticed a notice for the train station. The timetable the girl in the tourist office gave me said there was a train to Barcelona and friends due to leave in 20 minutes.
I needed no further persuading, I was off.
I met a really nice guy in the train station, a cycling enthusiast who seemed to work there. We chatted for a while about bikes and about recumbents when I noticed from the corner of my ear (is there such a place) that the train about to leave from platform 3 was the blah blah to Barcelona.
I suddenly realised I was on platform 2, I shouted to the guy I was talking to asking how to get to platform 3. He told me but just said not to worry I wouldn't miss the train. I just dashed off, pushing my bike over the tracks to get to platform 3 and was struggling to get my bike up the three feet between the height of the carriage and the platform when the guy I'd been chatting to walked by.
This time he was wearing his train person's hat and it was then I noticed his whistle and flag. It seemed he was right, the train wasn't going without me - it wasn't going until he said it could!
rnI spent the next two weeks visiting friends in Barcelona and then Alicante and took the wonderful European Bike Express bus back from Rosas to England - after a day of exploring Rosas and environs on my bike of course.
A great trip, do yourself a favour, buy Paul Benjaminse's book and do it yourself. He manages to choose the nicest, quietest routes all clearly mapped. Next year I fancy doing the entire route from Amsterdam, though perhaps doing the Rhone valley variant for a change.