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Good Day, Sunshine – Fredes to Villabona

I had breakfast at the bar/restaurant round the corner at 8.30. It had been a sub-zero night as we are at a high altitude and it was clear. The landlord was making a fire and the landlady made me breakfast. Great as usual, for four quid.

Nuri, who owned the house that I’d slept in said she’d meet me there to collect the keys, which she did. I paid her €20 and offered her another fiver, but she wouldn’t accept it. She said her mate Therese had a hostal in Vallibona, the next but one village on the GR7. She said save the fiver and spend it there! I’d seen it on the net and had coincidentally rung it that morning but there’d been no answer. It was too cold to want to pitch my tent. Pansy. And it was far enough for a fair day’s walk. I said my goodbyes to the locals and Nuri. Brilliant, brilliant people. Jesus Blade look over you.

There were still the remains of a frost in the shadows.

Looking back Fredes, my favourite so far I think, was warming in the morning sun.

I struck south west and quickly climbed over a hill to lose sight of the village. The mountains became hills and the valleys were noticeably shallower and less steep. But stunning all the same. Just different. The path dropped down through shadowed forest. Great for keeping the rapidly increasing heat at bay. For the last couple of days you could have navigated by the red and white painted strips that crop up every couple of hundred yards, but not consistently. They mark out the GR7 but are noticeably absent when you need to make a choice of route at a junction. The GPS is most useful then.There’s a red and white marker on the rock to the right just before the woods, and they appear on trees and walls intermittently.

The morning was beautiful.

I was heading for El Boixar, the first village on the route and about a couple of hours walk. Dropping down quite a lot and rising up a bit was the order of the day as the track loses altitude. And walking past free roaming cattle was also a regular and bedwetting feature. I just don’t trust them.

The bulls and the galls all have horns. That ain’t normal. El Boixar showed up on time.

It’s a small village and at the far side the path had been blocked. Hillbilly pillocks.

I threw my rucksack, walking poles and shoulder bag over and pushed under the fence. Reloading on the other side.

The path wound up away from El Boixar up a dry valley (they mostly are) and at the top it crossed a road and levelled out.

I love the silence that’s only cut through by songbirds, woodpeckers blasting away and the odd cuckoo. And occasionally by cattle with bells round their necks. My sense of smell has largely buggered off somewhere over the years but walking across the open grassland I love the aroma of wild thyme and rosemary crushed under my boots.

I clenched my buttocks and walked past more cattle a couple of times before the path dropped down into a canyon.

Usually valleys get wider but in limestone territory anything can happen. This got narrower.

It opened, narrowed, opened and narrowed for miles, a real treat. But scorching in the enclosed space with the sun heating up the rocks. I was glad that I had too much water!

The darkness in my thoughts from the night before had stayed around. I was walking through some of the best countryside in Europe and it wasn’t completely dispelling the effect of the photo. It preyed on my mind for a while. Maggie pointed out later that it was four years ago almost to the day that my mum slipped into the terminal stage of her life, which dragged out for a painful fortnight. But was it just a trick of the eye? And who was the lad? I saw what I saw. I’m glad I deleted it. It served no purpose and into the afternoon my darkness lifted.

And then Villabona appeared.

And as I dropped down to it the limestone cliffs I was winding round were exposed in their magnificence. Hello boys.

A spring started to feed the canyon, filling a deep turquoise pool.

Into the village one of the first buildings was Hostal La Carbonera. I walked in and asked the woman behind the busy bar if she was Therese. “Hello David, Nuri called me to say you were coming. We have a bedroom for you”. What a star that woman is! I ordered a beer and sat on the terrace in the sun.

I followed the scores on my iPad and the Blades were finally promoted from this crap division. A great day. I had a bath and came down for dinner at eight, with my flag. I got Therese and her partner holding the flag and chanting “we are, going up, we are going up”. The locals were intrigued. We’re up. Thank you Jesus Blade.