Art of Travel: Paris to Madrid

Day Seventeen

What a bloody frustrating day! I had left the camp site by 07:30, stopped for a road side breakfast an hour later, and reached central Barcelona by 10:30 all according to plan. It was a relatively straight forward run along the N11 through Badalona which linked up to the central Barcelona grid network. Courtesy of the unreliable Rough guide I had a list of hostels and budget accommodation together with a map of the city centre. The reception to the first place on the list was up three flights of stairs (being a budget option there was no lift), and I had a heavily loaded bike’s security to think of. I did not want to have to unload and reload Art at every place on the list, and it was too heavy to carry. However, you learn by experience, and since this was my first port of call on the hunt for some where to stay in Barcelona I struggled up the three flights of stairs with the fully loaded Art. I took my position in a disorderly queue behind confused looking fledgling back packers until a man behind the desk pointed at me and blurted out in a usa accent “QUESTION”.

“Yes”, I thought, “How do you manage to so effortlessly rub a person up the wrong way in such an efficient manner”? At the risk of jeopardising what I had struggled up the stairs with Art to attain I restrained myself by asking “I am looking for a bed for tonight please”? To which I received the curt reply “We’re full. Next. QUESTION.” I could have chinned him but annoyingly I did not even have the moral to articulate my grievances, and simply plodded on to the next rude receptionist. To my frustration all the subsequent places I tried either replied with “We’re full”, or they were unable to accommodate Art. Now, over the past month or so Art and I have covered some ground together, experienced our fair share of scrapes and, to be fair, I have been impressed with his steely perseverance in getting us both to Barcelona, so I am not about to turn my back on Art by leaving him locked to a lamp post on the streets of Barcelona. If it’s not good enough for Art, then it’s not good enough for me (or words to that effect).

The misguided comradeship I shared with Art some what burnt our bridges as far as finding city centre accommodation was concerned, so I decided to change tack by heading for the nearest camp site, which, according to the Rough guide was seven kilometres south of the centre, near the airport in an area called Prat de Llobregat. I hit the Port and headed south where I could see airplanes coming in to land. That is when the headache inducing frustration began. All the obvious roads I tried (by obvious I mean those heading south) kept on turning from a dual carriage way to a motor way with out any prior warning. On three occasions, with alarmed looks from passing motorists, I found myself briefly cycling along motor ways before the first signs appeared banning pedestrians, tractors and cyclists. Every road I took heading towards the airport turned into a motor way.

By about 15:00 I had only managed to make it about half way between the city centre and Prat de Llobregat. I stood astride Art, propping myself up against the railings of a fly over in a despondent frame of mind, surrounded by endless streams of intersecting motor way traffic coming towards me from every point of the compass, with no obvious way of completing the concluding half of the short journey to Prat de Llobregat. Even if, by some miracle I had managed to reach Prat de Llobregat I didn’t relish the thought of the daily commute to and from the city centre. So, with a sigh of relief I gave up that particular quest replacing it with one more feasible- backtracking to the campsite at Masnau which I had passed on my way to Barcelona from Calella that morning, some fifteen kilometres north of the centre. At least I new it was accessible and open.

Once I found my way back to the city centre after only having lost my temper with other road users a handful of times (with the street furniture and my now swollen knuckles taking the brunt of it) I was reminded that the road I had taken into Barcelona from Badelona was a one way system. This threw me initially and I wasted more time confronting one way road after one way road continually preventing me from travelling in the obvious direction. To cut to the case, I eventually arrived back in Masnou’s campsite at half past seven as the sun was hovering low over the horizon, twelve hours after leaving Calella, with a thumping headache and an immaturely aggressive attitude that would have caused me to strike out at the least provocation.

 

 

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