Cute and fluffy

It's not often I get a chance to post a photo of something cute and fluffy (Mystère doesn't count). Yesterday we didn't arrive here till mid-afternoon, so we didn't have time to do much apart from wander round the village and find somewhere to eat.

Today, after breakfast we set off to Peralada, pausing on the way to visit the cemetery -- since the main reason we are here is for S to do some additional research for his book. It's a standard Spanish cemetery, in block-of-flats style, where instead of graves there are ranks of coffin-sized "cupboards" stacked four high, with plaques on the front. Neatly trimmed grass, lavender and rosemary buzzing with bees. Outside the wall of the cemetery, there is another enclosure, so barren not even weeds grow in it. Here, a single grave lies alone. I imagine that when these two young resistance fighters were murdered in 1949, the grave was completely unmarked. Later the surround and a stone with their names and ages was added, along with a few ceramic flowers. In 1999, a black marble slab was placed there: "In memory of Quique and Celes, fallen in the name of freedom" (see extra).

From there we went on to Peralada, to visit the gardens of the castle. After a moment of confusion when we nearly got swept up in a group of French people being given a guided tour of the museum, we were a bit miffed to find we weren't allowed to stroll around the gardens on our own -- no, we had to have a guided tour too. The woman who took us round was perfectly competent, but when you are being guided it's difficult to insist on hanging around by the lake for 15 minutes trying to get a perfect shot of the swans and their week-old cygnets. There were some very fine trees and a dozen or so nesting storks, but as botanical gardens go it wasn't that interesting. As for the town, everything was closed, even the casino, so after visiting a cash machine, we set off to our next stop, Sant Quirze de Colera.

This is a fortified church in the middle of nowhere. It's on the GR11, but S hadn't visited it because he did a detour at this point. The last few kilometres were on very unmade road, so it was a bit disappointing to arrive and find that a) it was surrounded by a high fence b) it wasn't open to the public and c) no information about it was provided. However despite being in the middle of nowhere, there was a large restaurant seating about 50 in what was presumably a former barn next to it, which surprisingly had a steady stream of clients. So we stopped for an overpriced and not very memorable lunch of gazpacho, grilled meat, and a bit of salad.

Then we bumped back down the road, and on arrival in Espolla grabbed swimming costumes, books, and suncream and headed for the municipal swimming pool. Spain does public swimming pools right. Surrounded by trees, plenty of sun loungers, and with a bar so that after you have had a refreshing swim you can have a drink and eat tapas. Bliss! This one even had free wifi, so we discreetly checked email on our phones to reassure ourselves that no client catastrophes were happening behind our backs.

In the evening we hoped to find somewhere more prepossessing than the village bar/social club where we had eaten salad and salami in splendid isolation on Wednesday evening.  So we drove to the next village, where we found the recommended restaurant closed till July the 1st. Back in Espolla we thought we'd try the only other restaurant.  Closed for holidays till mid-July. So we ended up in the massive, fluorescent-lit barn of the Club Fraternel again. Seats for 100, but there was still no-one there except us. We ate stringy, carbonised fried chicken and chips, and an ice cream. As on the previous evening the giant TV was tuned to a channel showing exclusively films whose "dialogue" consists of gunshots, explosions, grunts, and screams. At one point a man came in to read the paper and drink a coffee, bringing the evening's total takings to a princely 19 euros. 

All very strange -- when S passed through Espolla on the GR11 last year he'd had a lively, convivial evening enjoying an improvised singing competition in this very spot. Espolla has a population of 420, yet all the time we were here we saw barely a soul in the streets. The only place with any sign of animation was the pool.