Gelati: 0, Wine: 6 glasses, Tapas: 0
Distance walked: 11 miles (officially), Time taken: 8 hours (including stop for lunch)
Woke at the ungodly hour of 6am today - by mistake. We switched to daylight savings overnight. I was using my phone as a clock and wasn't sure if it would switch time on its own so I moved it forward an hour before going to bed. It then switched itself forward yet another hour which was a nasty shock.
After breakfast we were all supposed to gather at the main hotel so we could leave at 8:45am so we actually hit the road shortly after 9am. Sarah provides back up support while Steven is doing the actual guiding.
There were lots of people on the trail today. It was the busiest I've every seen as we must have passed 50 or so people. Quite a few were Spaniards and I thought hiking wasn't a popular leisure activity here. I guess we'll see if it was just the holiday that brought them all out when we set off again tomorrow.
I was worried I would be among the slowest and be forever rushing to keep up but I'm actually in the middle which is good. We stop at intervals to let everyone catch up. On level ground, this means the fastest get a 5 minute rest, I get about 3 minutes while the poor slowest people get 60 seconds if they are lucky because we generally head off again as soon as they join the group. On the hills the rest time stretches to closer to 20 minutes.
The first part of the day was fairly level then we had a long but gradual climb. Due to the terrain we weren't supposed to get to our picnic lunch spot until 2pm but we have 4 very slow people in the group and didn't actually make it until 3pm so we were all starving. The slowest finally admitted defeat (and cramps and a dodgy knee) and got a lift instead of walking the afternoon section. I'm glad we have our guide with us as the last little bit to the lunch spot was through a limestone labyrinth rather like Hanging Rock only more spread out. We would have got horribly lost without Steven.
Lunch was very good. We had 3 sorts of bread, 2 sorts of cheese, 3 of salami, 3 of salad and 1 (only) lot of olives. Dessert was a traditional pastry with jam filling plus an chocolate Easter egg each because of the season. We had as much wine (again white, red or rose) as we wanted plus water. There was fresh fruit too which was generally ignored. After all this 11 of us levered ourselves to our feet and set off for the last hour or so into tonight's stop at the Lluc Monastery. We walked this bit a lot more slowly.
The accommodation here isn't as stark or as quiet as we were expecting although we have to make our own beds and we were only supplied with soap by special dispensation. We are going out to dinner as I feel the meals here might be a bit spartan. There is WiFi here but it is a paid service that only works on Windows machines so no joy for me (and they wouldn't refund my money when we couldn't get it to work - not very charitable or perhaps I'm expected to be the charitable one).
Everyone on this trip has done many ATG (guided) holidays before and are all keen on them. I'm enjoying myself so far but I like the self-guided ones just as much. I like be able to go at my own pace and eat lunch when I'm hungry rather than having to get to a given spot. The company is pleasant but that was just the luck of the draw. Most of the couples are very friendly. They aren't joined at the hip but split up and there is general chit chat and movement between sets of people which is pleasing.
Dinner wasn't at the monastery but at a restaurant not far away. We were driven there in shifts as the minibus can only carry 8 passengers at a time. Something to remember if you want to get ride halfway through the walk. We started with a glass of cava - the Spanish/Catalan equivalent of champagne or prosecco. Entree was dirty or ugly rice (depending on your translation) which is a soupy rice dish with meat chunks and vegetables and Moorish style spices (cinnamon and turmeric among others). This was very good. I must check if I have a recipe for it at home. Main was roast lamb which was so tender you could have eaten it with a fork. Sides were potatoes, onions and something orange coloured. We couldn't decide if it was carrot or sweet potato. All the veg had been roasted along with the lamb and all the flavours had blended. Dessert was the not particularly Spanish chocolate and hazelnut brownie with chocolate sauce and (vanilla) ice-cream in honour of Easter. We washed this down with white wine from the region for entree and a red for main. After dessert we were offered two digestives - one sweet and one dry. This seemed to be vodka based with many herbs. I tried the dry which wasn't as disgusting as you might have expected. We think the herb list included fennel (definite on this one from the taste), rosemary, tarragon, lime and chamomile but there were several other things listed on the label that we couldn't translate.
Finally we got bused back to the monastery and so to bed. The people in the room above me seemed to be chasing each other around their room, jumping from bed to bed and calling out to each other. I was trying to work up the energy to get up, get dressed and go upstairs to tell them off but decided to close my eyes first and went straight to sleep.
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