Art of Travel: Paris to Madrid

Day Eighteen

Art and I have been camping a Masnou for a couple of days now and this morning noticed that the zip disc I brought containing jpeg copies of my Giclee prints and artwork has condensation on it. No way of checking it now but I hope the files are not damaged, and are still accessible.

Back tracking a number of days, the campsite, when I arrived, was jammed, resembling an international biker’s convention. Motor bikes had been parked all over the place, people walked around semi clothed in biking leathers, and although stationary at least one member of each group of bikers seem to feel the need to rev the hell out of their expensive toys (it can not have been too good for the gaskets).

It was quite a contrast to the idelic farmland of Fornells. During my two nights on the Calella site I had not slept very well. In Fornells I fell asleep to the ubiquitous crickets, frogs croaking in chorus, donkeys braying, and other farm animals occasionally exercising their vocal chords, while in Calella sleep was challenged by the constant drone of traffic on the dual carriage way to Barcelona (N11), the frequent rumble of trains on the tracks running paralel to the N11 and the peeping of horns as they entered the tunnel running through the campsite’s hill. Added to this cacophony was the giggling of the pissed and the ongoing yapping and barking between the locally dispersed dogs.

Here in Masnou we have the dogs, we have the pissed (in next door’s tent), but we can out do Calella with babies crying, car stereos playing bad heavy metal, and just over the campsite wall for the past two nights there has been a bad out door music festival going on (or for all I knew it could have been an out door gymnastic display with accompanying music and cover bands playing during the intervals). I escaped to the relative solitude of the evening beach when they resorted to cover versions of Tom Jones and who ever sang “Achy breaky heart”. Now, at eleven at night they are into their country and western phase- god help me! One perverse good to take from this is in retrospect it made me appreciate what I had on the Fornells camp site.

The weather has been sunny and a steady thirty degrees. I believe I have been eating quite well- going to bed full most nights. For breakfast and lunch I have a mixture of fresh fruit, bread and mineral water, while dinner usually consists of a mixture of freshly chopped ginger, carrots and onions, chickpeas, tuna in olive oil, a tin of green olives with some of its brine, peanuts and dried fruit. It is usually accompanied by a white baguette, mineral water and red wine. If I have had a bad day I finish off with a section of dark chocolate.

 

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