Benifallet Through Pain to Paüls

It was a difficult day today. The two Yorkie twits didn’t sleep well and didn’t love the breakfast in the hotel. We are now cutting inland quite a few miles towards a spectacular limestone formation that runs north east to south west parallel to the sea. It involved walking back up to the bridge what we crossed last night on the way down.

Then walking down the other side of the river until we were two hundred yards from where we started.

On a bigger scale this area of operations is contained within the wobbly square below.

Today was ‘nothing’ day. Nothing but track between where we started and finished. Nothing but pain and, more alarmingly, nothing to drink. We’d forgotten to buy water before setting off, and the weather was going to make us pay. Time big!

We reached the point by the riverside where we had to turn westwards and trek up into the mountains.

Leaving a lazy, but beautiful Rio Ebro behind us. Full of massive catfish, like this one caught by Jonathan Avery from Winscombe in Somerset.

And huge carp too.

Bye bye fishies.

And here we started to feel the heat from the sun and the land. We dehydrated quite quickly, sweating massively from our heavy rucksacks. Oh silly billy boys. But we’re not singing as we’re marching. And 12th July over here would only be walking time for even sillier billies.

Looking back the river looked lovely. We could drink it.

But it’s much further than it looks.

The situation was becoming quite serious. No buildings, no roads and the nearest spring was miles away. Our spirits would have been very low if our heart rates and temperatures weren’t so high. Then a miracle of the rose arose when a klaxon sounded around two hundred metres up a hill to our right. Thanks Jean. We moved slowly but determinedly, as we climbed through the briar and bramble. Thanks Johnny. We got a bit torn but in a couple of minutes we were in a deserted industrial area, based on a quarry, very much like the environment where Jean Genet was captive.

Not completely deserted however, there was a man there, and we found him and asked him for water. He disappeared into a building and came back with a chilled litre and a half bottle of sin gas. We whacked it down our thirsty throats and felt a surge of life. Silly old buggers. We won’t do that again. Silly old flags, as my grandson Harry would say.

We were in a condition where we could move on, but the signage on the GR7 route that we were walking was appalling. I’d printed maps off a trekking website, had a signal for Google maps on my iPad and had a GPX track on my Garmin eTrex 20 that works off many satellite signals. Despite all this when you face a wilderness it all falls down.

The GPX track disappeared over the hills. We lost the iPad signal and we had no clue where we were on the paper maps. The GR7, as with other National Footpaths, is marked by a horizontal nine inch white paint stripe on top of a red one. But for some reason in this region they only put these markers where you don’t need them. Never at a junction so it’s guessing time.

There was an ancient red and white, barely discernible marker on a tree next to a tiny path running off the track we were on which disappeared up these mountains. We decided to follow it, even when it turned like a hairpin bend and shot off north eastwards, away from the direction we knew we needed to go. This is one of the greatest Spanish national trails!

The heat was grim without a whisper of air movement under the pine canopy. Thank goodness we had saved a couple of swigs of water in the bottle the lad gave us.

Eventually, when we had almost given up hope and turned back, the path emerged out of the jungle on top of a mountain. And red and white markers became a little more frequent, but not at junctions. Then we saw buildings on occasions.

And then we climbed another incline and we were at the top of the top, on a proper track going downhill. Hooray!

But it was so hot that even the snakes gave up the ghost.

To add insult to our largely self induced plight we started to be followed by a feral dog. When we turned and walked it sneaked up closer behind us. We pulled out walking poles that we hadn’t used so far, to fend the bugger off.

Then he shot up into the woods to our right and occasionally we’d spot him slinking across an opening, still stalking us, like Gollum.

As the afternoon wore on we dropped down to the floor of the lowest valley and had to climb up over a kilometre to Paüls. I struggled more than Gary, but we were both buggered. Just before we entered the village the feral dog came running at us out of the trees. I yelped loudly, something like ‘effing hell’ and it scampered around us and away as we brandished our poles. It had caught us well unawares!

I had felt really ill all day, even before the dehydration situation. I had two glasses of milk in a local bar before going to our guest house and falling asleep. I woke up two hours later just before 7pm and my sickness had subsided. A tough, tough day. The toughest me and Gary have had on our different treks. A sandwich and back to bed.

Night night.