Sant Carles de la Ràpita

We survived the night. Yes it was as creepy as creepy gets and just after Ellie put her headphones on and went to sleep I heard footsteps outside. They probably weren’t human. Maybe a cat or a fox or some other creature of the night, but in the middle of the night, in the pitch black it doesn’t matter how old you are, your mind still plays tricks on you.
And I’ve watched a lot of the x files recently.
Apart from that we both slept like babies. It was dead quiet and it was cool which helped.
At 7am I was awake and I’d planned a 30km bike ride but I actually ached from our little jaunt yesterday which is unlike me so I’m putting it down to not being recovered from covid fully and I scrapped the bike ride.
We left Castillo just after 9am and took a 50 mile journey across the other side of the Deltaebrè. The furthest point you can drive a normal vehicle right to the beach at Ampolla to hopefully see the Flamingos on the salt flats. We had tried finding them the other day but ti no avail and Ellie was desperate to try again before we left the area.
It took us just over an hour to get to the rice paddies and with water either side of us and the sea looming closer in front I suddenly saw a sea of pink on the left out the window. We pulled over and there they were. Thousands and thousands of flamingos. It was literally a pink sea as far as you could see and the noise was incredible. Atlast we had seen them, no wonder they call it a flamboyance.
We carried on driving another 1/2 mile or so until we came to the beach and then we drove on to the beach and parked up, opened all the windows, had some lunch and then fell asleep for an hour listening to the sea.
After our quick nap and feeling refreshed we headed for Ampolla town to do some shopping. Lidl was our first choice but it was tiny and had a tiny car park so we settled on Mercadonna which was easier but it’s more expensive. Luckily, except for fruit juice we just needed salad items.
Just off the roundabout by Lidl the was a huge Chinese outlet, these places sell absolutely anything and everything and we wanted a long reach squeegee to clean the solar panel, we found one and also replaced our smashed up draws that broke when everything fell out of the cupboards in Andorra. That was a right bonus because now we could put our packets and tins back into draws and free up cupboard space again.
From Ampolla we headed back to Roquettes and to our favourite little Airè with free electric. It wasn’t that we needed electric but tomorrow is going to be a washing day and I wanted to ride some more of the Viaverde greenway.
We parked up at 4:30pm, sorted the draws out and rearranged the cupboards back to normal. Then at 5:15 I set off down the Viaverde baix greenway heading away from Roquettes, passing through Aldover, then Xerta, and out to the Xerta hydroelectric damn about 25km away. There I stopped and grabbed a couple of pictures and then turned around.
Again I was amazed at how easy it is to cycle here. Pedestrians and cyclists are steered away from traffic at every convenience making it a real pleasure to cycle or walk anywhere and from one cycleway you can branch to another and another covering hundreds if not thousands of miles all across Spain.
Chasing daylight I arrived back at Wanda at 7:15pm just after the sun had set, very sweaty. I showered while Ellie made a salad for dinner and after we had eaten it was TV time until we both fell asleep around 10pm.Read more