A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
26/04/2025
In the valley just to the south, the Pop valley, our old and dear friends from Alicante, María del Mar and Emilio had a small house. We'd planned our route so as to be able to visit a few people, Claudio and Catrina in Cataluña, Pete and María Jesus near Tarragona and Amparo and Xavi in Valencia and finally friends in Alicante. Unfortunately, we couldn't arrange to meet Rosa nor Eugenio and Mar in Alicante but we did get to see Mar and Emilio. They'd arranged a very good arroz in one of their favourite places in Benigembla the Bon Aire.
Needless to say the food was amazing and it was so lovely to see Mar and Emilio again, I've known them for getting on for 40 years, and I don't get to see them nearly often enough.
28/04/2025
We set off taking the scenic route out of Vall Gallinera going sort of north west until we hit motorways to pass east of Madrid and then still north west up towards Burgos.
It was a fantastic, though very long, day starting in the mountains and hills north of Denia to end up in the vast plains of Castilla La Mancha to the plains of Castilla y León.
It turned out there was a major power outage, called the Apagón, in Spain which people initially thought might be a cyber attack. We knew nothing of it, we just though the reaon small bars in small towns had no working cash register was just because it was a small bar in a small town. Then the reason we had no internet to be able to look up restaurants and, later, places to stay, was because we were in the mountains and then because we were in some vast plain away from civilisation.