Day 52: Port Leucate to Maureillas Las Illas

October 17, 2023

Heart

Comment

Today we fully felt the exciting aspects of being on the Mediterranean. It begins with the soft feel of the warm and moist sea air. And today, anyway, there was a strong sea breeze. Then there are the palm trees and other "tropical" plants unfamiliar to us at home. The buildings have clay roofs, and because it tends to be holiday territory, there are scads of restaurants and other services, and marinas jammed with luxury sailing boats. To us it all adds up to an exhilarating playland. Added to the picture was the fact that for most of the time, anyway, we had broad smooth protected bikeway to ride. It was quite unlike other parts of France that we know. In most of the country, either they forgot about bikes or put in partial haphazard lanes and such that soon disappear. But here, sort of like in Germany, when in doubt they have put bike lanes, directions, crossings, etc. So cool.

Place to cycle, plus those unique pine trees.

The strong sea breeze made us feel sort of oxygenated. There is no shortage of fresh air when great swaths of it are blowing at you from the sea!

All last Spring we were photographing the Med crashing on the shore, plus surfers and wind surfers. Here we go again!

I suppose we do ultimately prefer a stone building with slate roof, wood smoke curling from a bread oven, with a dusty ancient cathedral down the way. But Mediterranean beach side condos or hotels are also something great. How about these decorated ones!

Although fuzzy, this shot is a good representation of the first part of the day. See the trees, the wind, the boats, the bike way.

The Eurovelo system is close to the hearts of most cyclists in Europe. The 17 routes, each more than 1000 km long cover 90,000 km in total. And when these are good, they are very good - with on road turn by turn signage, available .gpx files, accommodation guidance, and so forth. But when they are bad, they take you into impossible situations, and leave you there! So it's love and hate, but always a topic. That's why I photographed our first EV 8 sign. And EV 8 is already in our "news" as we read of how Scott trusted it to cross the Pyrenees and wound up very sorry.

Despite what I called the "warm" sea breeze (20 degrees) and pleasant conditions, we did start under threat of rain, and did have to hide the camera under a raincoat a bit. We spent our time looking at the storm clouds, and pedaling determinedly to get out from under.

Those tall reeds, like in the Camargue, are a feature of this landscape.

I noticed a large animal and could not identify it at first. When I saw it was a dog, and knowing we are approaching the Pyrenees, I thought it might be a Great Pyrenees. But no, it was a Newfoundland.

There were two, actually. The owner said their job was to protect sheep, so may they are mountain dogs anyway. He also said he had tied them up to keep them from rolling in the mud. You would need a pressure washer to groom them after that!

We arrived at Torrelles (Torreilles), a place made famous for appearing in the Classen's blog (https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/spain2/collioure-to-torreilles/) from a few weeks ago.

The cycle ways were quite well used, like in this case by a group of day riders.

The artichokes here are part of a really big field. We also saw large plantings of olives, cherries, and figs.

The tourist information at Canet en Roussillon reminds us that we are more than 8529 km from home. You know, if we would be able to cycle that directly, we could be home in under 1/2 a year!

At Canet St Nazaire there is an inland body of water (etang) which has a little preserved fishing village, comprised of thatch roofed huts. These are interesting, with their backs to the sea breeze, but the area where they are has been made into a nature preserve that one can walk through. The great part for us was that the walk ends at a bird watching blind, facing the etang.

Fishing hut. This area, incidentally, was often flooded by streams coming from the nearby mountains.

Scenes from the blind:

Nearby, on the sea (vs etang) side there were several kite surfers doing their thing. We could see their kites, but not them.

In St Cyprien, there was a huge marina, characterized by hundreds (thousands) of boats, plus restaurants galore, and many ice cream shops, where we did not stop.

My internal lawyer is still considering what "correct" dress means.

Now, at Argeles sur Mer, EV8 decided to lower the boom. We had been following along without problem, so when a left turn was indicated onto a dirt path, we thought "well, ok".

Now that is no joke! We had to backtrack all the way out, plus figure out where to go if not here.

At the entrance to the jungle path, the marking is clear.

Look, there was no mistake, we were directed to turn into the trap!

We had to take a long way around Argeles, but eventually did set off inland, toward Maureillas Las Illas, and the pass that tomorrow will take us through the mountains. It was a pretty long ride, but was made ok by the fact of a bike way that paralleled the big road. You can see this happening by zooming a bit on the track map above. But although it got us there, there was not much to see for this last half of the day.

Finally, we hung a left onto the D900, which is one way through the mountains and to Figueres. This road had an amazing amount of traffic - there were two cars passing us per second, or to try to describe it another way, a continuous stream in both directions of about 60 km/h traffic. There is no way we can take this over the mountain!

Our place near Maureilles is directly on the D900, so we can look at it from our window. When we went to shoot a photo of it, it was not so bad, but still...

We are weighing our options for getting to Figueres, and our host here says he is a cyclist and will also give us some input at breakfast.

Meanwhile, also out our window, the mountain is waiting.

Addendum: Scott's Way (green line) vs The Highway. We are starting at the blue donut!

Today's ride: 72 km (45 miles)
Total: 2,742 km (1,703 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	6
Comment on this entry	Comment	0