August 12, 2014
Tuesday: Near Seu D Urgell to after Ponts.
Wake at seven thirty and discover I've been invaded by huge black slugs, eighteen-nineteen centimetres in length slowly feeling their way along over water bottles, stove and shoes and anything I've got in the outer tent.
Morning of broken cloud as I get on the road at nine. Pass small SEAT rolled on it's side on the gravel shoulder. A few cars have stopped with occupants out, some speaking on Mobiles. A young man has climbed up and reaches in through the passenger side window, now at the top of the overturned vehicle and calls out "Da mi su mano!" to a stung elderly man held in place by the seatbelt.
Less than a kilometre further a car has pulled in and an old couple are at the open rear hatch filling water bottles from a roadside water font, as a riot of sirens and flashing lights come wailing up the road. A fire truck, ambulance and police car race by.
Reach Seu shortly before ten and stop at a Dia supermercado. Amongst my usual daily needs buy half mellon, a variation on the usual peaches and apricots as well as being almost totally water, something much needed as it warms up.
Leave Seu on a long straight descending modern highway to Adrall where I pass a hostel with people sitting outside having coffee. I wonder what the coffee is like, not remembering from the last time Is in Spain. But I still have the heavy mellon in a carrier bag on the back. Its noticeably weights the bike down and I want to get rid of it soon. Perhaps I'll stop for coffee later, as the road passes by the last house and enters a roundabout with an exit for Andorra, and the way ahead C14, signposted Lleida starts a steady incline, where I stop a few hundred metre on and lean the bike against the crash-barrier while eating the mellon.
The C14 I remember from having come this way three years ago, upon which I met a French couple. She was extremely jolly, while he was grumpy. She had next to no luggage except for a big warm sleeping-bag on a seat-post rack, while he pulled a heavily loaded Bob-trailer. Also met Swiss Maurizio www.ceraldi.ch for the second time and we rode for a day or so together.
I got extremely thirsty after a six kilometre long steep ascent. Then after an equally long descend to Ponts, where I remember the last time Maurizio and I couldn't find a mercado for to buy a cold drink. Today I cycled along this street and that. There are lots of bars and cafes. I'd already had a coffee earlier, but I needed now something containing a lot of cold fluid and the abovementioned only serve short drinks. I've cycled near enough all over town when I at last pull up outside a supermercado on the ground floor of a high-rise tenement block.
Refreshed after a cold beer and quite a few slugs of sparkling water, I ride on. Now after seven there isn't much scope for wild camping as to the side are yellow fields of wheat stubble. But there are small tree covered hillocks a field in. To get to one of these I turn off on a minor road which soon reverts to packed gravel. It leads up to one of said plantations, and I soon turn off along an earthen track ending in the hard packed earth gateway into a small field. It is level and there's no houses about, so I pitch the tent.
Today's ride: 99 km (61 miles)
Total: 3,423 km (2,126 miles)
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