Where’s Colin? He’s at Camping Jongar Mar in Roses (www.campingjoncarmar.com) at a cost of €15.50.
As I donned my RonHills this morning, Mick grumbled that it was barely even daylight and buried his head in the duvet. I went out alone, and was thwarted in my intended route. The fire that had shut two roads yesterday was now out, but there was still a fire engine in attendance and the roads were still closed. That forced me to run up a hill far bigger and longer than I would ordinarily choose (but, of course, I also got to run down it, which was nice and easy) and also put me in the right place at the right time to see the sun burst above the horizon:
With the past five days having involved few driving miles, I thought I’d best check the state of Colin’s leisure battery this morning, and in a way that’s a bit more precise than the three LEDs on his control panel. The volt metre told us that we needed either to drive more than a few miles today, or to find electric hook up tonight (11.9v = 40%, which isn’t a good place to be with this type of battery). As it happens, today is the day when our homeward journey was to start, and whilst we weren’t intending to go massively far, 100km sounded sufficient to put enough power in the battery.
Figueres had been omitted from our drive south, solely because I hadn’t read up on what was there to know that it would be worth a stop, so I thought we’d swing by on our way back. The main attraction is the massively popular Dali Theatre-museum and, had we visited the town on our outward journey, we probably would have spent the €14 each to go in. It probably would have made sense to have done so today, on the basis that there were no crowds. In fact, there was almost the exact opposite of crowds. However, we’ve visited quite a few art establishments on this trip, thus I didn’t feel like we’d get the most enjoyment for our money by going today.
We did take a brief walk around a bit of the town, including around the outside of the distinctive building which houses the museum…
… and we had an even briefer look at the castle, purely because we’d parked Colin in the castle’s car park:
Then we moved on with Mick opining that it hadn’t been worth the detour. I beg to differ, given that the detour was only a handful of kilometres, and it’s not like we had anything better to do with our day.
On our way out of Figueres I outlined the pros and cons of the two possible places I’d identified for tonight’s stop, and Mick plumped for the town of Roses. Arriving there only about half an hour later, we pulled up in the large car park, next to the police station. The mountain views there were excellent, the car park flat and its position next to the police station suggested that we would have a quiet night … but it wasn’t next to the beach, and the open-all-year campsite is. So, we decided to splurge and to the campsite we came. A good decision, as it’s the nicest of the trip so far (it’s also only our third of the trip, but even by objective standards it’s a good one). If we weren’t heading home for Christmas, it would be tempting to put down roots here for a while, particularly given the long-term-stay rates (25% off from Day 2, 50% off from Day 7).
Taken from within 100m from the campsite; we’re now kicking ourselves for not coming here yesterday and staying 2 nights
As I donned my RonHills this morning, Mick grumbled that it was barely even daylight and buried his head in the duvet. I went out alone, and was thwarted in my intended route. The fire that had shut two roads yesterday was now out, but there was still a fire engine in attendance and the roads were still closed. That forced me to run up a hill far bigger and longer than I would ordinarily choose (but, of course, I also got to run down it, which was nice and easy) and also put me in the right place at the right time to see the sun burst above the horizon:
With the past five days having involved few driving miles, I thought I’d best check the state of Colin’s leisure battery this morning, and in a way that’s a bit more precise than the three LEDs on his control panel. The volt metre told us that we needed either to drive more than a few miles today, or to find electric hook up tonight (11.9v = 40%, which isn’t a good place to be with this type of battery). As it happens, today is the day when our homeward journey was to start, and whilst we weren’t intending to go massively far, 100km sounded sufficient to put enough power in the battery.
Figueres had been omitted from our drive south, solely because I hadn’t read up on what was there to know that it would be worth a stop, so I thought we’d swing by on our way back. The main attraction is the massively popular Dali Theatre-museum and, had we visited the town on our outward journey, we probably would have spent the €14 each to go in. It probably would have made sense to have done so today, on the basis that there were no crowds. In fact, there was almost the exact opposite of crowds. However, we’ve visited quite a few art establishments on this trip, thus I didn’t feel like we’d get the most enjoyment for our money by going today.
We did take a brief walk around a bit of the town, including around the outside of the distinctive building which houses the museum…
… and we had an even briefer look at the castle, purely because we’d parked Colin in the castle’s car park:
Then we moved on with Mick opining that it hadn’t been worth the detour. I beg to differ, given that the detour was only a handful of kilometres, and it’s not like we had anything better to do with our day.
On our way out of Figueres I outlined the pros and cons of the two possible places I’d identified for tonight’s stop, and Mick plumped for the town of Roses. Arriving there only about half an hour later, we pulled up in the large car park, next to the police station. The mountain views there were excellent, the car park flat and its position next to the police station suggested that we would have a quiet night … but it wasn’t next to the beach, and the open-all-year campsite is. So, we decided to splurge and to the campsite we came. A good decision, as it’s the nicest of the trip so far (it’s also only our third of the trip, but even by objective standards it’s a good one). If we weren’t heading home for Christmas, it would be tempting to put down roots here for a while, particularly given the long-term-stay rates (25% off from Day 2, 50% off from Day 7).
Taken from within 100m from the campsite; we’re now kicking ourselves for not coming here yesterday and staying 2 nights
Your weather is better than ours! You may regret coming back. I remember camping at Roses (it was then known as Rosas). It was very hot and there were ants everywhere. 1981.
ReplyDeleteI think Figueres is a favourite of Humphrey - he tried to persuade me to go there after finishing GR11. It'll have to wait for our own road trip.
Have a good trip home and take care.
M
Funnily enough, no ants in Roses at this time of year!
DeleteI don't think I regret coming back (knowing that we'll be off again in a couple of weeks), but I definitely preferred the weather of the last few weeks than the weather at home at the moment.
Have been hugely enjoying all this! And if you're passing close to Carcassone on your way back, the medieval citadel, La Cité, is well worth a visit. There's a spanking new Aire just outside the citadel. http://www.carcassonne.org/fr/une-nouvelle-aire-de-camping-car-carcassonne
ReplyDeleteHave fun!
Your comment arrived just as we reached Toulouse, and unfortunately I'd not even thought to read up on places between Narbonne and Toulouse to see if anywhere sounded worth a visit. Next time!
Delete