Soláns

Finally Ellie had a good nights sleep. But she is still feeling rough so today was going to be a taking it easy day.
After waking up at 7am and having 2 coffees which is my normal ritual I just wanted to get off the mountainside in Prat de Compte and back to the car park in Lledò for when the sun came up to catch as much solar power as possible. So at 8:30, we left Prat de Compte and drove the 9 miles back to where we were yesterday evening.
Unfortunately for us the weather wasn’t playing ball today and thick hazy cloud obscured the sun right up until 10am. At which point we gave up looking at the solar monitor and decided to go on a bike ride and whatever power was generated was what we would have. Except for moving area, which we didn’t want to do, there was nothing we could do about the sunshine.
It was cool when we set off on the bikes but not cold, perfect cycling weather and within 15 minutes we both took some layers off and were back into shorts and t-shirts. Our first stop was going to be the convent at Hortè saint de Joan but as we left the viaverde greenway the road took a nasty climb and Ellie couldn’t manage it. We could see the convent on top of the hill at the centre of town but no matter how much Ellie cursed that climb she wasn’t going any further so we turned around and continued along the cycle way towards Bot.
We passed through long dark railway tunnels, over viaducts and had mountain views all the way. There were hundreds of school kids from various schools in the area either out for a day trip or having a long PE lesson but they were all having a great time and it was great to see so many youngsters out on there bikes. I even got a high five from one as we passed them by.
Everyone we met said hello, and passing farmers on tractors in there fields waved at us. This really is a great place to explore.
We reached Bot just after midday and stopped at the cafe that was made from an old railway shed and done up like an airstream. We both had excellent coffees.
Then we decided to climb the hill into town and explore a bit.
We passed a couple of factories the first being an olive processing plant and we could see the olives going along the belts and then poured into huge vats. Next door was a grape processing plant where they made wine and off to the side was a little shop selling the wine that had been produced there. We headed down the main drag. I can’t call it a high street because there’s no shops but it is the main road that runs through the centre of all these little towns in this area and at the centre of all is the church, and the town hall. Outside of Bots town hall were 7 elderly gentlemen waiting for there turn to go inside and when we passed they all greeted us.
We turned right from the town hall, doubling back on ourselves and heading through a rabbit warren of ancient streets and architecture before coming to the top of the hill we had just climbed and going back down to rejoin the cycleway. As pretty as Bot was we weren’t sold on moving in anytime soon. But we do love the freedom in this area.
We headed back for Wanda, passing through the railway tunnels again and over the viaducts. Stopping at a couple of the old stations for Ellie to regain her strength and at 2:30pm with 36km under our belts we arrived back at Wanda.
It had been quite a long day in the saddle, more so for Ellie who doesn’t like riding a bike on a good day let alone when she’s feeling rough, but she pushed through and without the bikes we wouldn’t have seen all that we had.
The sun still hadn’t broken through the cloud and the solar had only made 80 watt hours. We were going to have to use the power sparingly.
We knew we couldn’t sleep in Lledò because of the mosquitoes so we headed back for Prat de Compte for our third night. It is certainly a lot cooler on the mountainside so we sleep better.
Getting back to the car park, we heated the water had showers and then relaxed for the evening. We had a visit from a vanlifer who decided to park right on top of us at 5:30pm but then they left so we were happy, only to be disappointed at 8pm when the same vanlifers rocked back up and started messing about in there van trying different ways to park it. At 8:30, we’re not sure whether the wind put them off or the church bells but they left. So we had yet another free night on our own.Read more