Order

The tidiest wood stacking I’ve ever seen.

It was another night of rain, and day of dubious weather. G and A decided to walk to Noarre to say goodbye to friends there, while S and I drove down the valley to do a bit of touristing. It was much better weather down there, and positively warm and sunny when we got to Gerri de la Sal — we’d decided to go back to visit the salt museum. This turned out to be not terribly interesting. But it only cost 3 euros, and we bought 2 litres of local organic olive oil for only 20 euros, and also some salt of course. Then we had a coffee and a wander around the village, including across the medieval bridge to the monastery on the other side of the river, which sadly wasn’t open to the public.

Then we decided to hit Sort for lunch. The plan was to go to Cafe Pessets, which does classy tapas, but we arrived to find it looking rather definitively shut :( We wandered up the main shopping street and inevitably ended up in the ferretería buying a Pallars Solsona knife — a penknife for S this time. Then we picked a random bar for a beer and some very average patatas bravas.

I’d picked up a leaflet of Romanesque sites in Pallars Sobirá, and we decided to visit the walled medieval village of Escaló rather than go straight home. It was a bit of a detour, and the weather had deteriorated dramatically when we got there: it was starting to spit rain as we parked. A group of walkers loaded up with heavy rucksacks and camping gear were sheltering under a medieval arcade and getting out food and camping stoves. We had a quick wander round the village (blip) and then as the sky became ever more menacing (extra, featuring a pylon and a castle!) made it back to the car just as the rain started. The walkers, well wrapped up, were trudging off.

We went a bit further down the valley to the petrol station where I had bought the Rioja. Tragically, they only had one bottle left. Of course we bought it, and then it started bucketing with rain so hard that we sat in the car and waited for it to stop, our thoughts with the poor walkers.

When we did set off, we unfortunately caught up with the storm again, and ended up parked back in Escaló, where we sat and watched biblical rain mixed with tiny hailstones drum on the windscreen, reducing visibility to zero, while torrents of water poured down the road.

Eventually we made another attempt, managed to successfully negotiate the remnants of the storm, and half an hour later were driving up the Vall de Cardos in brilliant sunshine; it had obviously rained there, but not nearly as much.

Back at the ranch, we all did some packing, and G concocted an excellent dish of arroz con cosas (rice with things) using the many garden vegetables he’d been given. A nice companionable evening, finishing as usual in the bar.