Travel

The Perfect Hideaway

~ Kate Wilson ~ 6 Comments

Things have been a little stressful recently so we were glad to have the holiday which here is called El Pont de L’Immaculada. Pont means bridge and the name comes from the fact that there is a public holiday on December 6th as well as December 8th  so the middle day, the pont, is also taken off.

Without any hesitation we decided to head for the hills.
North of Vic and before you reach the Pyranees there is an area called Llaers which is not as well known as other places and so even at this pre christmas holiday it was very quiet.

The Hotel de Serra is very simple, very relaxed, very welcoming to Springer Spaniels, and very peaceful.
The area is full of oak woods and the floors and beams in the hotel are old oak.  There are lots of little nooks with log fires which invite you to spend the evening reading or playing cards.


The food was very basic – chunky bread, hot soups, goats cheese, country sausages for breakfast and large carafes of strong red wine.

Outside they have goats and ducks and geese and peacocks.

Calm confident dogs potter about and there are cats in the barns.

There are walks to nearby castles and when you come home it is the sort of place that doesn’t care about a little mud on the stairs from your boots. I think it was Duna’s best holiday EVER!

 

Bains de St Thomas

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

 

We went in the van to Catalunya Nord last week so called as it is widely seen as being a part of Catalunya although officially it is on the French side of the Pyrenees. Past clamp downs on the language mean that only the old and the young now speak Catalan there but it is now taught in schools. The highlight – for me – was our afternoon in the hot sulphur bathes of St Thomas. Being a great fan of indulgent lazing about I always head for these places if they are available and luckily for me there are lots of centres – Balnearis – to try out. Some are closer to home and I will write about them as I gradually work my way around them!Set in the mountains it is the perfect way to relax after a long walk up one of the highest mountains in the region – Canigó.

The Delta

~ Kate Wilson ~ 7 Comments

 

So, after a rather long gap I have at last found time to write the next post.

Delta de L’Ebre
Flamingos at Delta de L’Ebre

I think about this blog a lot and gather information and photos but then sometimes it is hard to get started – what to include? what to leave out?  How to write about my life here while steering away from the ‘too personal’ which involves other people?   Too many questions can stop you from just getting on with it! It was my birthday and we went away in my van for the first time here in Catalunya. I drove late at night to the Delta de L’Ebre which is near Tarragona and about 200 km from here. The Romans named this river the Iber and this maybe where the term Iberian Peninsula came from. Being behind the wheel made me nervous – after more than 35 years of driving in the UK and in France I suddenly felt like a beginner again. I couldn’t understand why.  Yes it meant keeping to the right and also sitting on the right so visibility was a bit restricted but…..could it be that after 10 months of being a passenger I had lost confidence? There is something here that feels different – perhaps it is the speed and the sheer amount of traffic on the roads.
We arrived well after dark and I felt rather than saw the surrounding waters. I crept along. In the morning this is what I saw….and this……The Delta is one of the most important wetlands in Europe and is a vast water-land which is now both a protected haven for thousands of birds and an agricultural centre for growing rice. The narrow roads lead from one little settlement to the next and are only slightly raised above the paddy fields. Houses sit out on watery fieldsand the intensive work of rice production means there are complex irrigation systems to fill up and empty the fields as the season requires.Like so many mirrors the fields reflect light and colourWe spent hours on the long empty sandy beaches creating sculptures from the wood that had been washed up and stripped clean by the sun the sea and the windThe van sheltered us from the strong winds that blow in this region and we parked beside the water with only ducks and stars and a new moon for company.That night in the very far away distance we could hear horns tooting and bangers exploding when Barca won the Spanish League cup and although we listened on the radio to the celebrations they all felt like sounds from another planet. Here only peace and sunshine, wind and open skies, birds and sand.
And delicious rice!

Bon Any 2010

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

 

Because I am not in the UK I am not sure what ‘we’ are calling this new year.

Is it Two Thousand and Ten or Twenty Ten or just Ten?

I heard that some people here are calling it Any Deu – ‘year ten’ in Catalan but generally it is Dos Mil Deu. When deu is accented – ‘Déu’- it is the word for god but my ear still can’t tell the difference except when I hear Adéu (goodbye) and the vowel sound is often very long.
I brought in the new year on the Costa Brava in a beautiful place called Port de la SelvaWe drove there one morning without anywhere booked to stay which felt very much more the Catalan way than the British one! In Cornwall this would result in a very stressful search for a room at one of the years busiest times. But the Costa Brava is a summer destination so we easily found a small apartment overlooking the harbour with the mountains in the distance and again amazingly there was no problem about the presence of one DogThe first morning there was a very small market with fruit, vegetables and lots of pork! Also CDs and I bought one by Joan Manuel Serrat who is a Catalan singer-songwriter. In 1968 Spain entered him in the Eurovision Song Contest but later withdrew him when he asked to sing in his native Catalan. This was during the Franco years when the Catalan language was repressed by the dictatorship. Serrat’s records were then banned.
It is a short drive across the border to France or Catalunya Nord as it is also called as it was historically a part of Catalunya. We stopped to eat crepes in Colliure a beautiful medieval town which has attracted many artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Braque and the British writer Patrick O’Brian (Master and Commander) who lived here for many years.Another day we walked up to the Benedictine monastery Sant Pere de Rodes which nestles on the hillside. Its origins date from the 1st century and it used to be a centre of political power..It is very windy at Cap de Creus and any shelter is welcomeThe area is often blasted by a north wind called Tramuntana(beyond mountains) and although I don’t think it was blowing that day it was still almost unbearably cold. But out of the wind…..also very peacefulOn the way home a visit to the nature reserves at Aiguamolls de L’Empordà
It is one of the most important staging posts in Europe for the Spring and Autumn migrations of millions of birds crossing the Mediterranean to and from AfricaIt is protected and yet much smaller than in the past due to land drainage and development. If you want to see what can happen when development is permitted then look no further than nearby Empuriabrava a development build on the marshes begun in the 60’s and now an eyesore on the horizon. But thanks to a campaign that began in 1976 the whole coast has not disappeared under concrete and there is still a haven here albeit much smaller than before. I thought of all the birds which may stop off here on their long journey to Penwith. Here I saw my first storks – not nesting on cartwheels but on special platforms in a large colony.