Travel Book Extract for June 2011
Two Wheels Over Catalonia by Richard Guise
Day 1
Like That? Portbou to Llançà
It was a calm, misty-blue morning. Eerily calm for a spring that followed the most violent of winters.
Two sheets of identical blue were divided by a distant grey line. Since the lower sheet ended abruptly 200 metres beneath my feet, it must have been the Mediterranean Sea and the grey line the horizon.
Standing alone at the dead end of a dusty track, I strained to hear any sound but the call of a gently wheeling gull, eventually picking out some thin voices, too far away for me to detect their language. After a minute or two the limp, white sail of a small yacht, perhaps a kilometre out to sea, drifted from behind the sharp, black rocks of Punta del Falcó to my right, the south. The voices must have been carried from there on the gentlest of breezes, across the marble-still water.
The track had been unsignposted but might have pointed to ‘End of Pyrenees’, ‘End of France’, ‘End of Spain’ or ‘End of Catalonia’. For this was why I was here. And why Benny the bike was here, too, leaning against one of the two green water tanks that evidently justified the track’s existence. The ridge of short, spiky bushes running parallel to the track carried along its crest the frontier between France and Spain before this invisible boundary plunged down the vertical cliff face into the sea, and so this weedy spot, just in France, was the nearest I could get to the top-right corner of Catalonia, Spain’s north-easternmost region.
Catalonia is a right-angled triangle, its right angle at the north-west, high up in the Pyrenees, and its 300-kilometre hypotenuse forming the region’s coastline. Three hundred kilometres if it were a straight line, that is. My objective was to cycle this coast before turning inland to sample the Catalan interior.
Raising a hand to shade my eyes, I squinted along the visible coast to the south and could just make out the light-grey curve that ended in Cap de Creus, a target for lunchtime the next day. In the morning haze, it seemed half a world away.
As if to distract me from any second thoughts that might have crept in, the sound of a vehicle rattling along the dirt track behind suddenly broke the spell. As a small, white van came into view, I prepared my excuses in French for standing on what might well have been the property of Cerbère Council. As the van approached, though, I was surprised to see a logo on the side proclaiming it as the property of Portbou, Cerbère’s Spanish twin just south of the border. The driver’s window was already down and a chubby face, unshaven and boasting at least a few teeth, smiled at me.
‘Bon dia,’ he said in Catalan.
‘Bon dia,’ I responded, but continued in Spanish – though far from fluent,
I was at least confident in that. ‘I was just taking some photos. I hope this isn’t private land?’
Chubby shrugged. ‘Cycling far?’
Having heard my plan, he couldn’t prevent a hint of doubt creeping into his eyes.
‘You’re going all the way to the Delta de l’Ebre?’
‘Sí sí,’ I nodded enthusiastically.
Chubby looked me up and down before inclining his head to take in Benny.
‘Like that?’
His eyes had focused on the basket hooked over Benny’s handlebars and on my lightly sandalled feet. Of course, according to Continental cycling convention I should have been sealed from head to foot in bright Lycra, but had no intention of charging around the countryside like an elongated bubblegum wrapper. Instead it would be T-shirt, padded shorts and sandals, with boots for the rough stuff and waterproof coat for the wet. My only concession to speed was a rather battered blue helmet – in case my head speed was suddenly reduced to zero.
‘Ah no,’ I half lied. ‘I’ve got my luggage waiting down the coast. This is just a short Day One.’
Still evidently unconvinced, he changed the subject again. ‘I take the photo!’
Which indeed he did, taking my camera and positioning the scenic waterfront of Cerbère’s little bay carefully to the side of Benny and myself, a vision of naive confidence. Basket, sandals and all. Wishing me a cheery ‘Bon viatge’, Chubby banged back into his van and, shaking his head rather ostentatiously, bounced back up the track. He must have been dispatched simply to take my photo, by Spokey the Cycling God.
Two Wheels Over Catalonia by Richard Guise is published by Summersdale (paperback; £8.99). It is also available through amazon.com and all good booksellers.
