FRIDAY 24^th JUNE Posted 3 weeks later.

Madremanya

The day dawned grey, warm and still cloudy. OK, right. Walks, touristica stuff, get out and about. We went to the prehistoric village ruins at Ullastret, which had been abandoned after a Roman attack in 187 AD. Von nervous every time Milo ran up to a wall, waiting for him to leap blindly over. But he was sensible. Lots of grain silos and impressively large and deep stone-cut cisterns. Massive views all around, a well-chosen site.

What’s that horizontal niche in the Ullastret wall about?

The sun was now out, and it was getting hot. We headed for Toroella de Montgri with the intention of climbing up to Castell del Montgri — not from the town at the foot of the hill, that would have been insanely reckless, but from the Santa Caterina hermitage I’d spotted on our new map which was reachable from north of the castle, and about 1,000 feet up, so the distance we had to climb would be halved. We bumped down a rocky dust road towards Santa Caterina but after a couple of miles found the route barred to cars. We’d have to climb much the same distance. By now it was noon, 88°F and the sun was getting stronger. Worse, we’d forgotten to bring water either for ourselves or Milo. We looked at each other, and the air-conditioned car bumped slowly back down the track.

One winter’s day we’ll walk up to the magnificently sited Castell del Montgri, visible across the whole Emporda region and a replica (built eleven years later) of Harlech Castle.

We managed to get lost in Palafrugell looking for the beach, until a closer study of the map revealed the town was a mile or two inland and there was no beach at Palafrugell. So we drove round Llafranc, packed with holidaymakers, not a square inch on the beach, nowhere to park.We finally found a place right at the top of the town and walked down to the sea front. If this was a Friday in June, I shudder to think what a Saturday in August must be like.

A quiet Friday in Llafranc in June

We found a pleasant enough bar on the seafront where we could have a beer. The beer came with a tapas menu, so we thought “Why not? Let’s have a snack.” Von chose some type of whitebait, I had salt cod (bacalhau).

Before the Bellacosta rip-off

We waited so long for it I was forced to have another beer, but when the tapas finally arrived, it was surprisingly delicious, and in reasonable proportions too. The cod was really good, perfectly cooked and melting. The bill came — and it was triple what we were expecting. My Spanish and Catalan is nonexistent, so I went inside to find an English speaker. He pointed out we had been served the full restaurant portion of the dishes, €15 instead of the tapas at €5. I pointed out we had ordered the tapas. Had I been Jack Reacher instead of inadvertent Gwyn, I would simply have pulled his head across the counter and broken his neck with a single twist, but there I was, a fat white elderly tourist with no vocabulary of argument. We ordered from the tapas menu, we were served the whole baloney. No argument about that, it was big and good, but we thought we’d just found a great bar, not a rip-off joint. But we were wrong. Friends, be warned: if you order at the Bellacosta bar in Llafranc, get a contract in writing first. The patron knocked off the cost of one beer. RIP-OFF ALERT!

Back to the shack, swim, more magret for supper. Watch a DVD of The King’s Speech on Enola Gay.

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