Day 54: Figueres to Vila Fresar

October 20, 2023

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Today has surfaced as a "not much to report" one. We set out from the hotel, which was just beyond the rather nice, if small, walking zone. Very quickly the peanut gallery piped up with the ultimate put down: "Looks like Vancouver". That was unfair, because Vancouver does have some big wide ugly streets and tall buildings. This was small and generally unassuming.

We did run across a long market of dry goods, and instinctively headed down it. But only half way along Dodie bailed, declaring the market boring.

For the next excitement, I spotted a supermercat, and we were in th4 market for some coffee power, so in Dodie went. She emerged with the coffee, alright, and even some oranges, but she declared the market "like Mexico". That was not a reference to a vibrant Mexican food market, but rather to the 7-11 like "OXXO" stores that we found everywhere in Yucatan.

It was a market, not necessarily "super".

Our next excitement was the realization that there would be no small roads to Girona. That is, the smallest would be the same N11 from yesterday. Not so much an excitement, but an irritation, was finding that the road is not really N11 but rather NII, or to put it another way, N2. Somebody in the highways department must have thought it rather elegant to sometimes use Roman numerals. But elegance is out of place when absolute clarity can be needed for safety.

Dodie used her telescopic vision to spot a raptor in a distant tree.

The land we were passing did not have any exciting crops or other features, but it did have quite reddish soil!

Passing Orriols, the buildings looked very plain.

Back home, Dodie had somehow misjudged the distance or difficulty of reaching Girona from Figueres, and she dropped in an intermediate stop at a place (but not even a town) called Vila Fresar. It seems to be here as a service for the nearby AP-7 highway, and there seems to be only one building, being the Sausa hotel/restaurant. We arrived well before noon, after cycling no more than 25 km. We could mention, though, that those 25 km were directly into a powerful head on wind. Dodie was proud of having found a way around the AP-7 to reach the hotel, and she wanted a photo of the road she found. There it is, below!

It does not show up in the photo, but the road did decide to head fairly steeply uphill, adding some minor challenge to our short day.

Fortunately the hotel was almost empty, and they had no trouble putting us and the bikes right into a large ground floor room. There is a pool, which in principle I could try, and maybe they have CNN on the TV. Otherwise it will be a long 18 hours until we again take to the road. We will then spin quickly into Girona, and have time to look around!

Today's ride: 25 km (16 miles)
Total: 2,814 km (1,747 miles)

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