Light and shade

We did a short and unchallenging walk today, from Ginestarre to Boldis Jussa, leaving a car at each end. It was only 3.4 km, more or less along a contour line, but thanks to my limp it took us an hour and a half. It was a nice walk though, partly in the open and partly in the woods, with lovely views as usual.

G and A chose to walk back along the same route, but S and I elected to go down the valley to do the shopping. Queued at the excellent butcher in Ainet for 20 minutes to buy sausages, and then went to Llavorsi for the rest, before sitting down at a bar for beer and tapas.

Afterwards S was determined to go to Tor, a village on the border of Spain and Andorra that is the subject of a podcast called “13 houses, 3 murders”, which means exactly what it says. Smugglers’ feuds apparently. Getting there involved about 15 km along a mountain road. Yes it was metalled, but it was very narrow with a rock face on one side and a drop into the river in the other. And there was a surprising amount of traffic, requiring awkward manoeuvring in order to pass. Glad I wasn’t driving.

Finally we reached a point where half a dozen cars were parked and the only vehicles continuing were Landrovers (three in five minutes — were they smugglers?). I refused to walk the remaining 2.5 km, so we drove back down again, and home for a siesta.

This evening G and A’s daughter B and her partner O arrived — they’ve been doing the multi-day Porta del Cel walk. So six for dinner tonight — sausages with ratatouille brought from home by us.