Day twenty nine

 

 

The coastal road to Sitges.

I get up late after talking into the night with my neighbour and leave around midday. I travel the winding road to Sitges, a road I remember well from the past having driven along it. This was after a pleasant flat beach front cycle-way that put me in a good mood. The road to Sitges is super and spectacular to drive on but less fun climbing on a bike as trucks are hardly able to get past me when am I moving at walking pace. Still everyone kept calm, including me for the most part. The ride down is exhilarating of course and I can keep up with the traffic, but it is short lived.

It tries to rain all day, spotting droplets but never quite manages a downpour and I feel like I am often on the edge of a storm front chasing the fair weather in the south and have been lucky up till now.

Fair weather along the coast later in the afternoon.

There are many camp sites north and south of Tarragona along the coast, so I don't worry too much about picking one and relying on Google maps to take me there. Having completed more than 60km I begin looking for signs along the road for camp sites. Maps.me decides to take me off the main highway (the N340, which is actually the road - if I remember correctly - that goes all the way to my destination in Andalusia) to tour the local countryside. It's a diversion into the nearby hills but then returns me to the N340 after adding 3-4km to my daily toll. I decide to ignore it and carry on the N340 saving time and reducing the distance I have to travel. Why they do this I am not sure, maybe it's for Sunday bikers but it's no good for those touring trying to reach a destination. The N340 has a wide hard shoulder, which is as good as any cycle path, so there is no reason to divert. Aside from that there are plenty of gas station pee stops on the N340 and even a McDonald's along the way. Not that I would be stopping at McDonald's even for just a coffee today.

I see a campsite sign and ride in. It is much cheaper than the last one (Estrella de Mar), which was on the Barcelona flight path and the noise from aircraft landing stopped conversation every minute as one aircraft after another landed, all headed for the massive lightening storm over Barcelona. Sometimes there was less than a minute between the aircraft and that did not stop till close on midnight. After that barking dogs took up the role of disturbing campers through the night, much like a couple of evenings ago. Estrella de Mar was also the most expensive so far at 24 euros and there was not even hot water, apart from the showers. Virtually all these campsite take tents but do not cater for them. The ground is often soil or stony gravel and rock hard that's been compacted by dormobiles and caravans. Grass is a rarity and I often have problems banging in my tent pegs. Tonight my neighbour lent me his rubber hammer, which weighed a ton but it did the trick.

Really these camp sites are not catering for camping at all, instead it is all about Clamping (luxury camping) or is that Glamping? Even the new type of tents need something to hold them down on the ground and backpackers with tents do not usually carry heavy hammers as they have to travel light. A bit of grass would improve these camp sites, which are rather strange, sterile places and you do have to wonder what the attraction is especially when it is located under a flight path close to an airport.