Stealth camping on the beach 30/12

Nice day of riding today. I woke up this morning to the sound of birds tweeting (but the garbage truck noisily going over a speedbump was probably more responsible for the actual waking up:P) and went for a lovely run around the camping ground, which is impressively large. Luke slept in later, so much so that I had already packed up my tent completely by the time he emerged. Still, we were on the road by 10.30, heading up a very beautiful route alongside a national park.

There were some men in orange overalls bearing the name of some rehabilitation project scraping dirt from the side of the road in an apparently pointless gesture. I didn't really think about it at the time, but they were probably prisoners. Luke must've made the connection though, because he came out with the statement: “We should get rid of prisons as a concept”, which started an enjoyable and prolonged debate.

When we got to the next town, we had the choice between a heavily trafficked coastal road that was quite direct, and a less trafficked one that went up into the hills and avoided Tarragona, a large city that would've been tricky to navigate through. We chose the latter, and therefore set ourselves up for a lot of climbing. Both of us were finding it pretty hard, so much so that we were convinced there must've been something wrong with our bikes. We'd just put some lubricant on both of the chains, so maybe there was some truth to that explanation, but I think we were just out of practice after our time off in Barcelona.

Eventually we reached the end of the climbs though and made it to Valls, where we had lunch. Despite trying three supermarkets, we didn't manage to find any edible avocados (must mean they're really out of season!), so it was a humble lunch indeed. The bread was pretty good though, and very cheap at 49c a loaf. I bought five of them:P Back in Pamplona, Aitor had told us that food would be a lot cheaper down this end of the country, and I am now beginning to see where he got that idea. The same loaf of bread would've cost 1.50 euros back in the Basque country. I'm not really sure what the reason for it is – Aitor said something about taxes. A bit weird, but I'm enjoying it:P

The lunch break took quite a while, so it was already quarter past four when we rolled off again. That left the planned route out of the question (and we couldn't find the road anyway), so we decided to just go to Tarragona instead. Twenty one km to go, and 75 minutes of daylight remaining, could we do it? It wasn't looking likely based on the average pace for the rest of the day, but the road we took was well paved and flat or downhill all the way, so with a bit of extra effort, we made it easily! It felt good to push hard like that. My bike doesn't ride like it used to (there's this strange vibrating noise the whole time I ride and the front brake still scrapes when I go fast), but I can still maintain a decent speed if I try:)

We bought some stuff for dinner and breakfast and had a look at the map to try and work out where the camp site would be. It seemed to be a few kms down the road back to Barcelona, and after confirming that with a service station attendant, we braved the night time traffic with Luke's inadequate lights and followed the signs to the place. When we got there, the gates were shut, and when someone eventually came out, they told us it was closed. Bugger. I didn't want to go back to Tarragona, so instead I proposed we stealth camp.

I find a promising site in a clearing completely shielded from the road. It looked a little too convenient though, and to avoid any nasty surprises from any other users of the space, I picked another spot up in the dunes. I'd already put up my tent when Luke, who really does not like the idea of stealth camping, found a sign, which says “Camping prohibido”. I'm going to ignore it though. I don't think anyone's going to report us to the police, and even if they do, we'll just get moved on, or given a small fine.

Fast forward to the next morning

Luke was very reluctant to put up his tent, preferring to just walk around the beach even when it started raining. He wouldn't talk to me either, which I found rather immature, so I left him to his own devices and retreated inside the comfort of my tent. A car pulled up about fifty metres away from the tent and parked surreptitiously behind some trees. Worried that they'd seen the light of my laptop and were planning on taking some course of unpleasant action, I got out and stood guard for the next ten minutes until Luke got back in a more agreeable frame of mind and finally put up his tent. They didn't seem to be doing anything, so after forty five minutes, I went to bed and was asleep not too long after that (pausing only to hide the contents of my wallet in a cunning location inside our map).