Day 60 - Cadaques to L’Escala - Gorging in France ...Then Basquing in the Pyrenees - 2023

June 16, 2023

Day 60 - Cadaques to L’Escala

I Smell a Smelly Smell that Smells, Smelly …. Anchovies Mr Squidward!

One of the beauties of travelling by bike is that you pass through places that have never been on your radar and you end up learning and appreciating. Today’s example is L’Escala, our end point for the day. We picked it for it’s location as it sets us up nicely to ride ‘The Angles’ road into Girona tomorrow. It was obviously a beach resort town, and it does have several large beach’s with the requisite apartments and resort hotels lining the shores.

However, it also has Greek and Roman ruins on its eastern side, and its real claim to fame is … anchovies! Yes, there’s an anchovy museum and an annual anchovy festival. The festival isn’t until October, and we skipped the museum but we’ll be on the lookout for L’Escala anchovies in the future. Regarding the subtitle of today’s entry, yes, I watched quite a bit of SpongeBob with our kids.

We’re into a slow wind down mode now with short days and frequent down days. This was planned to allow us to check out the towns along the way and also it accounts for the expected rise in temperature as we head into the later half of June on the Costa Brava. That pattern certainly is starting and today the forecast was for low 30’s by noon.

We had breakfast at our apartment in Cadeques, stopped for one shot of coffee along the beach, and then set off just after 9 to retrace our steps 8 km up and then 8 km down to Roses. The climb surprised both of us at how easy it seemed and we were thankful we were headed ‘out’ of Cadaques as the traffic going in was pretty heavy. On our side of the road it was light to moderate and there were quite a few other roadies out too.

Once in Roses we headed south along the flat coast and had the assistance of a good tailwind for about 10 km’s. The ride was a mixture of paved and gravel farm roads with a few section of bike paths, some paved, some single track. Nice easy biking with not much to distract you.

It’s the sort of cycling where your legs just turn subconsciously and your mind wanders wherever it wants to go.

For me that turned into a bit of a nostalgia trip when Kirsten pointed out the diesel powered water pumps that were flooding newly planted rice paddies we were riding through. She remembered me telling her about the ubiquitous sound of these pumps along the Nile in Sudan, where I spent quite a bit of time working in the late 90’s. The river banks were green with crops as far as the water could be pumped, usually a few hundred meters from the river at most, and then the desert would abruptly start.

We stopped pedalling and listened. Sure enough, the unmistakable put-put-put of a single cylinder diesel motor and the sound of water rushing from pumps. It didn’t take long to locate a few of these (and they were generally in a lot better working condition than the Sudanese ones) and that was it, my legs were turning and the bike was moving down the road towards L’Escala, but my mind was miles and decades away.

That’s the sort of afternoon it was, effortless, hot and not a lot of excitement. We pulled into Sant Pere Pescadora (the prelude to all things anchovy?) for a light lunch and a couple of litres of cold fizzy water and pineapple juice (that’s now become our ‘thing’) and then pedalled the last few km’s into L’Escasla along the beaches and past the Greek and Roman ruins.

L’Escala has an interesting old port area with a few small beaches that looked like they were mostly used by locals. We had our post ride bevy at one of these and then took a long walk along the water front before heading off to dinner.

When we set on L’Escala as a destination for tonight,we also discovered that there was a Monsieur Michelin bib gourmand restaurant in town, Le Gruta, and we managed to get a reservation.

Dinner was very good and we were sitting in a secluded garden terrace. It occurred to us that we eaten very few meals outside on this trip so far and it was a very nice change. We had their 6 course degustation menu and every dish was very good, excellently prepared and presented, but we both agreed none of them had anything that made them pop or stand out. Damned with faint praise! Or maybe we’re getting jaded?

Tomorrow it’s on to Girona, and the weather looks to be even hotter with temps forecast in the mid 30’s.

Eight km’s up, eight km’s down, then 30 km’s of flat rice paddies. Simple.

Heart

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SOTD - Sweet Dreams Are Made Of THis, The Eurythmics

‘Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree. I’ve travelled the world and the seven seas, everybody’s looking for something’. That’s the nostalgia trip I was on this afternoon.

Leaving Cadaqués and the great little apartment ‘Palau’ we had.

One last coffee by the water before we head out.

And up we go, 8 km’s of this really nice grades of around 4% average. Lots of traffic coming at us (timed this pic so there was none in it) but very little going our direction.

Cadaques has a thing about ‘Things’, Volkswagen Things that is. We saw an orange one on this stretch of road when we were coming into town and then this white one as we were leaving. We think they may have been shuttles for a hotel … odd niche vehicles from the 70’s. Perfect if you needed a vehicle that had a removable doors and a removable canvas roof.

The climb was more or less over in about 45 minutes

Nice view down onto el Port de la Selva which was on the other side of the peninsula from Cadaques

Now down in Roses looking back to where we came from. Thirty km’s of flat mixed agriculture coming up

Very smooth crushed gravel bike trails for a good portion of this section of the ride

And here’s the diesel powered water pump the set me off on a nostalgia trip

It was flooding this freshly planted rice paddy

More gulls (already counted those) and this stork looking for lunch. Bird number 2 for me!

We even got a little section of single track. It was smooth dirt and quite good to ride. It would have been a different story if it was raining.

The beaches on the north side of L’Escala. This is also where the Greek and Roman ruins were. Very nice and not to crowded now.

The south side of L’Escala harbour. Quite a pretty town by the waterfront

It’s not all anchovies here .. L’Escala was the sight of the 50th celebration of the Sardana in 2010, a traditional music and dance of Catalonia

Amazing this Tamarisk tree is still alive!

This one’s in much better shape and provides a nice frame for the south shore

The Little Prince sculpture along the south beach

We had the six course set menu, all very good. Zucchini gazpacho with a prawn croquette, roasted tomatoes and truffle aioli was the standout though.

Desert was the ubiquitous ‘molten chocolate’ cake …. But this was probably the best executed one either of us had ever had. Crispy outside, smooth and creamy inside and the ice cream was delicious.

Today's ride: 47 km (29 miles)
Total: 2,556 km (1,587 miles)

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ann and steve maher-wearyIt’s so fun to read about your trip while remembering ours. Great to learn about new things you saw and we didn’t and then read about things you saw that we did too. You blog is terrific!
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1 year ago

Kirsten KaarsooTo ann and steve maher-wearyYes, that definitely is a bonus of going places others have been before.
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1 year ago