I write this as we are flying from Barcelona back to East Midlands Airport. Due to circumstances to be described, there are no airport photos, and so he post will be liberally sprinkled with pics from the rest of the holiday.
It’s been a stressful trip home. At 12.45 I was enjoying a final Spanish beer in Terminal 1 of Barcelona’s El Prat airport, before heading for the gate to board the 1325 flight home. This was unfortunate because the flight left from Terminal 2. We realised that we were not actually in Terminal 2 when we discovered that the only flight leaving at 1325 was going to Turkey, which would have been lovely, but not quite as planned. During the next 20 minutes we sprinted across the terminal, periodically asking for directions from anyone who understood our dilemma, emerging into the arrivals lounge having not actually arrived from anywhere.
We descended a level, located the exit doors, ran across several lanes full of taxis to board a bus for the 5 minute journey to Terminal 2. We ran left, found a sign for Security pointing back the way that we had come, and persuaded a Security official to allow us to queue jump before unpacking I-pads, phones etc and passing our bags through an x-Ray machine for a second time.
Our gate, 44, seemed miles away, and by now I was expecting a night in a Barcelona hotel and an expensive last minute flight tomorrow, especially when the signed route to gate 44 was blocked by closed glass doors. A lady in the adjacent duty free shop directed around an alternative route, and we finally arrived at the gate at the time that our plane was due to take off.
Passengers were still boarding. I would like to thank whoever, or whatever, had caused the delay at the aircrafts previous port of call, Dublin, which the captain apologetically explained as the reason for the delayed departure.
It’s been an interesting week. It was a “Scraggy Crows” trip to L’Ampolla, 100 miles or so south of Barcelona. Our friend Richard organised the villa – he has a sailing boat moored 10 miles away and is familiar with the area. The trip was almost cancelled – as he welcomed us to the villa, having driven from the UK and arrived in the area a couple of days before, Richard explained that 2 weeks previously the owner had suggested that we find alternative accommodation since the villa has no power. A temporary illegal connection was made, and the villa was habitable. On Wednesday the villa was disconnected to allow “official engineers” to wire up an official power supply. We were out on Richards boat when he got a text confirming that the wires were in place, but a separate visit was needed to connect the villa to the supply, and there was no way of knowing when this would be. The villa once again was powerless. The owner was investigating alternative accommodation, but we would be spending Wednesday night with no electricity.
It is always useful to travel with engineers – who else but an engineer happen to keep a generator about his person, or in this case on his boat? We were able to have several powered sockets via an extension lead, and most importantly could keep the beer cold.
On Thursday night we moved to a slightly smaller, but more comfortable villa about 10 miles away, where the power was from batteries and solar panels. Within a couple of hours we had defeated this by the combined use of an iron and washing machine, and the owner had to be summoned to undertake a “system reset”, essential since the water supply was electrically pumped from a tank. The supply “tripped” again on Friday, and since initially we couldn’t contact the owner, the generator was once again brought into service to provide water and some lighting. The owner arrived within an hour and diagnosed and fixed a loose connection. A further short interruption this morning left Chantal using a generator-powered hairdryer.
Despite all of the drama, it’s been a good week. We explored local villages, including a walled mountain village where Chantal and I left the rest of the party exploring the medieval streets while we climbed the steep and rocky track up to the castle ruins overlooking the town. There was lightning and thunder around us, and we could see rain sweeping towards us across the countryside. The storm broke as we reached the highest point, the only people there, but we were able to shelter in the ground floor of a tower until the rain stopped. More rain threatened and so we descended to join the others for lunch.
We caught the train the Barcelona, where we “saw what there was to see” from an open top bus, a lengthy circular tour thanks to traffic. We found that we needed to buy advance tickets to see the Sagrada Familia, the cathedral designed by Gaudi, and still unfinished. Advance tickets were also required for some of the Gaudi-designed houses that Chantal wanted to see. In fact it was a day of discovering how to plan and what to see on a future visit, maybe a long weekend.
We spent a contented day on Richard’s boat, sailing around the sheltered bay, and lunching at a restaurant that rose on stilts from the sea, accessible only by boat, or wading at low tide.
L’Ampolla is close to a wide estuary, with lagoons where flamingos settle. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds of them. This was a photo opportunity not to be missed and so Chantal and I left the others around the pool and travelled to the far side of the estuary. We saw just one solitary flamingo. A Dutch couple that we met commented that it would have been nice to see just a few more. We did enjoy a drive along a wide sandy spit, followed by a long walk along a beach, before we got a call from Richard saying that a planned rendezvous for lunch was cancelled since we were moving villas that afternoon.
Our final full day was spent with the others on a hot beach – bit too hot despite cooling off periodically in the sea, and after a couple of hours we all retired to a beachside bar for a beer, and from there to a small restaurant in the local village where we had a relaxed lunch of tapa. Chantal had great trouble with the tapa options while on holiday, since she doesn’t “do” fish. On this occasion she found a dish based on black rice, but found it tasted fishy. It was pointed out that the black colour was from squid’s ink…
It had been a relaxing week, despite the electrical interruptions – maybe just a little bit too relaxing for me, but fun all the same. A few more photos will appear in “Recent Photos” in due course.
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
