I am not someone who gives up easily. I have determination, or as Gill sees it, I'm very stubborn. So it took an act of considerable will power for me to abandon our original plan to go to Lake Trasimeno and head for Languedoc and the Costa Brava, so even if that was going awry I was not open to be easily persuaded to change my mind again.
We stayed two nights in Roquebrun-sur-Argens' sanatorium for the bewildered caravanner. It wasn't a total waste of time, we did some laundry while looking for somewhere else to stay for a few days near the Etang de Thau. Every site Gill phoned was full, as were all the nearby Camping Car Parks apart from the one at Remoulins near the Pont du Gard, it had a couple of free pitches. The app recently introduced a new feature wich enables you to book ahead, but it's an additional extra you have to pay for. We decided it was worth having, then booked in for a night and hoped for the best, as the messaging on the app seemed quite ambiguous. It does work though, there was one spare pitch free when we arrived mid afternoon.
Gill continued phoning around. The only site we found with space was one a couple of kilometres up the road next to the Pont de Gard. We stayed there in May 2018 on the way to Corsica, I remembered the place fondly, a nice informal wooded site that attracted a good mix of people. So we booked in. It was as I remembered it, a lovely spot among pine trees by the river, a five minute cycle ride from the famous aqueduct.
It's an easy going, relaxed kind of place with a calming atmosphere, just what we needed after days of driving on busy motorways.
We unloaded the bikes and pedalled off to admire the bridge.
It is spectacular, not just the structure itself but the sophisticated understanding of hydrology and topography that the larger system implies.
Later I took an evening stroll down to the river. I got chatting to two young German women who were hauling their paddle boards onto the small shingly beach. I wondered earlier if I should inflate mine. They reckoned the river was so low that standing up was not an option as they kept running around. So probably it would not have been worthwhile, especially as a rocky stretch upstream means you can't reach the Pont de Gard itself on a paddle board. 'In a kayak maybe', they surmised.
The forecast for the next week or so in the Costa Brava looked promising. We decided to give up on the Languedoc coast, it was full, and head for Cala Montgro early, staying a few days in the area around the Etang de Thau on the way home later in September when some of the Cyrils and Mabels, Hans und Elkes, and Jans en Betjes decide to trundle northwards. The past week has been frustrating, but we made a good call, disastrous flooding in northern Italy is all over the news, more or less exactly where we would have been staying.
Illa Mateua campsite was busy but not heaving. How busy places have been has surprised us, but when we checked back through the blog we realised that we don't travel in early September that often and maybe the first couple of weeks of September is especially popular - summer warmth but fewer children on sites. This year our six week trip to Japan and New Zealand beginning in late October has forced us to travel earlier than usual. However, the Schengen visa rules have affected us too. We require a three month break somewhere in the year to 'reset' the visa 90/180 rule. November - January makes the most sense for us, we can have Christmas at home then head off to Spain in the last week of January on the ferry. The downside to this is it forces the starting date of an autumn trip back into the latter part of August as we need around seventy days to have enough time to explore the more distant parts of this Mediterranean, like Greece, Sicily or Sardinia.
We don't like rushing about, though we just have in order to dodge the storms in central Europe and Italy To make amends we booked into the site at Cala Montgro for a week.
It just slipped by. In the beginning we were happy to simply relax. We both were a bit off colour. Some minor bug we'd caught, possibly on the bus into Bologna where the artsy looking guy sitting across from us looked very 'pale and wan', coughing weakly as if cosplaying John Keats.
Cala Montgro is one of the most beautiful coves we know in the Mediterranean, developed on one side, natural forest on the other.
Nearby l'Escala is a pleasant low rise resort, the area is easy to be in, somewhere we are happy to come back to.
One of the things I was looking forward to on this trip was getting beyond the novice stage on my paddle board, I know I can do it, but still find the act of standing up a bit alarming. I just need more time on the board to the point where being on it feels natural. Cala Montgro is sheltered and can be flat calm if it's not breezy. Sadly the one thing the weather isn't at the moment is calm. I did go out on the board, it was ok using it like a kayak, but just too choppy for me to have the confidence to stand up.
So we just mooched about, took walks along the clifftop path at the back of the campsite,
and wandered along the promenade by the beach.
The beachside restaurants aren't expensive, but they are places to have a meal rather than tapas. My taste is still affected by what I suspect is some sort of post viral problem. It has also supressed my appetite, so eating out is not quite the treat it used to be. Delicious snacks are a better bet, and luckily Spain's tapas culture makes one of the best places in the world for tasty morsels.
'WAIKIKI', a cocktail bar near the beach opens six days a week from 8.30am to 2.30am, serving tosta style breakfasts until eleven then classic Spanish tapas plates from then on. We had lunch there one day and promised ourselves breakfast the next time we're back.
We keep returning to Cala Montgro because it's a particularly lovely spot with a laid back vibe. A place where it's easy to sense that life can be good. And it can be, but not for everyone. I have a habitual morning routine when we travel. Usually I wake up before Gill around 7.30am, get up and put the kettle on to make coffee. While waiting for it to come to the boil it is difficult to resist the temptation scroll through the BBC news app. The headlines are rarely uplifting but generally not particularly shocking either. Today they were. The news of Mossad's plot to maim and kill Hezbollah's commanders by booby trapping thousands of pagers and walkie talkies seemed scarely believable. It had the intricacy of John le Carré novel combined with fiendish ingenuity you get in James Bond movies. It really was a moment when truth seemed much stranger than fiction. It was only when my initial incredulity waned that I sensed the true horror of the act, state sponsored terrorism really, carried out mercilessly with no consideration on the impact on civilians including children. Why do Western democracies continue to supply arms to Israel when they use them to kill and maim civilians? The world does feel as if it is sleepwalking towards a horrible global conflict. I thought of the lines Auden wrote as a young man reflecting on the rise of Hitler, how prescient his anxieties turned out to be
"Soon, soon, through dykes of our content
The crumpling flood will force a rent
And, taller than a tree,
Hold sudden death before our eyes.. "
No comments:
Post a Comment