GR-92
Sometime during Sitges Pride, in those periods of recovery in the Airbnb, I began watching the webcams in the Spanish Pyrenees and scheming my hiking schemes. My ingenious plan was that after celebrating pride on the beach, Jon and I would make our way north thru Spain to the mountains and hike a section of the mighty GR-11, which crosses the whole Pyrenees range. Over the days I picked out a section, made a plan to get there, and it looked down right glorious.
But then one fateful morning, to my utter disbelief, against my sincerely held wishes, and with absolute contempt for my ingenuity, all the webcams showed either complete white out or, better yet, fresh snow. Fresh snow. In the middle of June. Ever the pragmatist, I cursed global warming for a hoax and abandoned all my careful schemes – ain’t nobody got gear for that.
So it was that with only the barest suggestion of advanced planning, guided by just a few obscure blog posts, we generated an entirely new plan on the fly to hike a little known trail called the GR-92. The trail extends nearly the whole length of the southern Spanish coast, but we wanted to hike just a little tiny section from Roses to Portbou – a mere 3 day hike. Even though it’s a short little hike, better hold onto your butt, dear reader, cause we got no idea what we’re doing. Is there water along the way? Do we have map? Where are we going to sleep? Who knows! Let’s just go!
Just to document the travel, I’ll summarize that we took a train from Sitges back to Barcelona, another train to Figueres, stopped for lunch and resupply in Figueres, then took the bus to Roses.
The beach at Roses turned out to be beautiful, the weather sunny and dry, and the town quite pleasant. We got off the bus with a bunch of high schoolers and locals who had just come over to enjoy the afternoon by the water. It’s like Florida but less smelly.
We stayed in a paid campground that night in Roses, and Campground Joncar Mar had little to distinguish it from the many others we’ve stayed at – except of course a drunken French biker gang. We spent the evening gesturing and talking incompatible languages at each other while drinking homemade wine from unlabeled plastic jugs. After a while it came out that, along with being crazy, they were enthusiastic Trump supporters.
The old man of the group even put on a little show to explain his complex political views, pantomiming muscle flexing while saying ‘Trump, Trump!’, then flipping his wrists around gaily while saying ‘Macron, Marcon!’. He even pranced around like a ballerina while cupping his invisible boobs saying ‘Merkel, Merkel!’ The whole thing, powered by bootleg French wine, was so surreal that Jon and I still laugh at it now, months later.
Anyways, I think we eventually did some hiking. The next morning we walked out of Roses heading north. Initially, we walked on a paved path carved right into the cliffside, but soon we left town and entered a strange, oceanfront desert. Here, the foothills of the Pyrenees run right into the sea, sometimes forming jagged cliffs, other times white sandy beaches.
This is easy trail and beautiful country, in its own desolate sort of way. There are almost no trees, just a few isolated stragglers that would be more accurately called tall bushes. Instead, a wild variety of giant cacti cling to the slopes, and a drab assortment of pointy grasses and even pointier shrubs sparsely populate the flats. The hills aren’t big, but the views are completely unobstructed, so it’s endlessly interesting to check out the shoreline for every angle as you pass.
In the afternoon, we had lunch and went for a refreshing swim at a secluded nude beach called Cala Murtra. The water was clear and cold, which was great in the frying pan heat, except for you could see a bunch of scary looking fish and the rocks underfoot seemed to conceal a million crabs (I only saw one but I’m certain they were watching!).
Eventually, we followed the coastline all the way to the attractive little seaside town of Cadaques. Salvador Dali once called it the most beautiful village in the world, and he had a home right nearby for almost 40years. Picasso was also said to have been inspired by the village and visited frequently. Even the infamous pirate captain Barbossa once swung by to loot the town and burn the church, and surely even he thought it was a nice spot.
We weren’t so inspired by Cadaques’ beauty that we wanted to pillage it, perhaps owing to the affect of 50 years of tourism, but we did have a lovely time drinking beer by the ocean are shaking our heads at the French tourists. That night we stayed in yet another uninspired campground up the hill, but at least it had showers. If you want to hear a stupid story, ask me about how to ask for Ibuprofen in Spanish.
The following morning we climbed up out of the valley, slowly leaving Cadaques’ further and further behind. The Mediterranean sun makes even a 300m climb seem hard, but there was a good salty breeze at the top along with some nice views of the coast.
Soon enough, we were back down to the coast and strolling alongside the breaking waves once more. Unfortunately, it was back on a paved walkway though. The coast remained pretty, and walking on a sidewalk is easy, but it made us feel like we were walking thru people’s backyards, and we got plenty of sideways looks with our full backpacks and hiking poles cruising down the promenade.
We ended up sleeping at the only campsite in town, which in hindsight wasn’t worth the shower. It was perhaps once an RV campground, but over time it had become closer to an RV graveyard.
Thankfully, the next morning we were back on the trail and away from town. The final section from El Port de la Selva to Portbou turned out to be lovely. First it climbed up a few hundred meters to a ridge, giving great views back down the coast from where we had come. Second, it passed National Park oceanfront, which included the most rugged and scenic views of the hike.
The Northern terminus of trail didn’t even have a marker. Jon believed that surely no people could be so callous as to leave the end unmarked, but after awhile spent blundering around finding nothing, we eventually had to run to the train station for fear of missing our ride.
It’s strange to say, but that afternoon we took the train into France and somehow ended up in the mighty medieval fortress city of Carcassonne! But that’s a tale for another day.