Mountain weather

The weather has been pretty good so far … it had rained during the night, and this morning, G and A proposed going on a different walk from Lladros, where we were the other day. I looked out of the window and declined. Instead I went with S to the bookshop in Alins. It was raining by the time we got there. S bought books, and I bought a jar of honey.

By the time we left it was no longer raining, so we decided to detour to Tirvia, up on the hillside, wreathed in scarves of cloud (blip). It’s a pretty village (see the church door in extras). It also has a cafe, so we stopped for coffee. We could smell tempting baking smells, so S followed his nose to the very traditional bakery next door, where he bought a freshly baked sourdough coca (a kind of Catalan flatbread) flavoured with aniseed and with sugar sprinkled on top. We liked it so much we bought another to take back for G and A. Arriving at Bordes de Graus, we learned that they’d arrived at their start point, walked 100 metres, and then there was a lightning flash followed immediately by a loud crash of thunder, and it started to rain. So they did an about turn and headed straight back to the car.

We improvised lunch with what we had. S had hatched a plan to hike up to a hut on his own and sleep there overnight, but the weather was evidently deteriorating. So he went for a run along the road instead. G and A decided they would go for a short walk to replace the one they didn’t do in the morning. Once more they asked me if I wanted to come. Once more I glanced out of the window and declined. And once more they got rained on, to the extent that they had to shelter till it stopped. Back at base, G decided he hadn’t walked enough, so he went further up the hill and got rained on again. Meanwhile, S had dodged all the rain by timing his run right, and so did I, by staying indoors.

Dinner was a very nice tortilla de patatas made by S, using all the eggs, followed by cheese and crackers. With the cheese we opened the €3.50 bottle of Rioja I’d bought at a petrol station en route here, and it was superb. I’m glad we didn’t waste it on tinto de verano.