Pushing for a rest Good FriDay

Thursday 2nd April

Couldn't wait to get out of the camping ground and the Midgets Mansion, so rushed off down the road towards the N340. Luckily, Will's beer and wine medicine seemed to do the trick, cause he was feeling better and fairly pumping along this morning.

We were sent along some nice little back roads, until we reached Benicola. Only 10kms from the "other" place, maybe we should have come here, it looks nice. Although we got confused again, (common theme happening) in the town centre, so stopped....too early for beer, hmmm, ok, coffee and crepes! Yeah sounds like just what we need to push out the kays...

I'm confused and maybe chocolate will help? 

Oohhh, nope, too much chocolate....burping that up is not as pleasant as you may imagine. But gave us a chance to reassess our escape. Somehow we found the N340, and started cranking up the slow gradient.....for 33kms. When do we get the reward? The traffic was really heavy today, I guess it's coming into Easter and that is only to be expected. Some great views none the less.

Looks harmless but don't be fooled. It's uphill.

Nice little distraction from the gradient. 

We made it into another Province, and the farming changed a little. How good are you feeling Will? Let's try for Tarragona? In our dreams, we are not up for the century in one day just yet. But it was good to see us gaining on Barcelona. We are often passing, what look like Nurseries, and they have all sorts of mature plants for sale. Some of my favourites, are big, fully grown trees, that are trimmed like Bonsai. They look cool.

Another area and another version of Spanish. 

Might not make Barcelona for a few more days.

You could eat dinner off these. 

We came to a real river crossing. One that actually had heaps of water in it and it was more than a couple of meters wide. It is the River Ebro (Riu Ebre). One of the longest rivers in Spain, at 950kms long. Yes I googled it! It was impressive. Less impressive was the cycle path that was made for half a loaded bicycle and a yoga guru! But the road had no shoulder and we were scared, ok?

We pushed the bikes stepping over the upright posts...funny. 

After the river, we soon came to our reward for the uphill kays. It was an awesome downhill run of 3kms, at super speed! Got a bit cold on that run, but I wasn't complaining. So much fun, and no speed wobbles.

Some skilled riding to get this pic at 45+kms/hr

We trekked on, only having a couple of stops for important things like drinks, food and toilet. It was a cruisey run, until we thought we would have some lunch in Carmales. We turned in off the N340, and rolled through the town centre. Everything was shut. We came to a small junction, with a couple of signs, one said turn left to Carmales, 2.5kms. So we did! It ended up taking us all the way to L'Ampolla, our final destination. Excellent!

What was this stop? Will?  I see ya back there!

Yet another lucky find. Great ride to L'Ampolla.

Again we had a bit of confusion with the booking, but this time it meant we could only have the onsite van for one night, and then we would have to use our tent. Bit of a bummer as we planned a rest day, but I'm sure we can rest in the tent. The caravan was really cute though.

How cute is this caravan? Love it.

No sheets provided. 5€ for a set of paper ones. Not using them. 

Good Friday - 3rd April

This was a rest day for us. Time to catch up on some washing, and just relax. We were under the impression everything would be shut, but nothing was. Oh well, we both needed a cruisey day.

Breaky in our outdoor kitchen.  Different. 

Not quite bacon and eggs, but almost. Churrizo, tomato, onion and fried eggs on Bimbos (buns we bought). Spanish Bimbos for breaky, they were delicious. Then we had to move house to our tent site....bummer, but no big deal.

Hey,  we have grass. 

We thought we would go for a short ride around Olles Lagoon to see if there were any flamingoes. More tourists than Flamingos, but still we saw four real live ones, flamingoes....der!

In search of Flamingos

Two of the four we saw. Heaps of other birds too. 

We decided to continue into town for a looksie, and of course some beer and lunch. It was super busy, but we got to the end and just thought that would do us. Plonked ourselves down, and ordered a beer.  I started to notice we were a bit underdressed (and maybe a bit scruffy) compared to the crowd, in there designer gear, and we were not getting served again. Hmm, might need to get cleaned up in Barcelona. Anyway, we managed to order a mixed seafood paella, and proceeded to watch some kids testing a couple of guard geese on a jetty nearby. Scary bloody geese!  Our food came, and it was fantastic. Awesome! We ate every last bit, then they told us it was the wrong dish. Who cares, it was great.

Looks really nice. Was a great weather day.

Wrong dish tasted pretty right to me.

View from our table. Awesome! 

Don't scare the guard geese Will.

We headed back, via a couple of back streets, and just chilled out in the tent. No dinner required, just a couple of take away beers from the supermarket. I had a little nap, while Will read. Lucky, as it was Friday night, and going on the last one in a camp ground, this one was like New Years bloody Eve! Not much sleep was had by anybody.