We'll a confession first. I seem to have been in a time machine as I was convinced yesterday that today was Saturday and Festival day. But it's Friday!
So this Friday morning we had a discussion on a variety of places we could go to for the day and ended up deciding on a circular route to the reservoir at Darnius. About a 40 minute direct drive north west in the direction of the Pyrenees.
If you zoom in you can just about see snow on the mountain tops.
We drove through Garriguella, where we had lunch a few days ago, on to the picturesque village of Rabos d'Emporda.
The village was eerily quiet, with us only seeing one lady walking her 2 dogs in the whole time we walked about. It's very pretty but we couldn't see the appeal of living there as it's so isolated and for the locals there wasn't even a corner shop. The church had an odd bell tower construction - a wall with bells hanging in the arches.
Someone must've visited sometime as there was a geocache found in the woods nearby.
We then drove about another 5 miles to Espolla. Here we found a welder at work - one of his compositions was on a neighbour's window using a variety of old tools, horseshoes and metal bits. I quite liked it.
The church has been dragged into the technological era - automated bell clangers (the bell isn't pulled but hit) and loud speakers to amplify the bell ringing.
We had hoped for a cafe or bar for a cuppa but without anything open we headed on to the next village/town. We'll, we didn't stop at Sant Clement Sescebes as it looked quieter than the previous two, but went on to Capmany.
Capmany had a similar church bell tower to Rabos. Luckily it was a bit more lively as we found a cafe/bar/shop in the town square. It had a John Deere tractor parked up as a local farmer was enjoying a late morning cuppa and a pastry. We sat in the sunny part and joined him with our cafe con leches.
Back to Rolo, which we'd left parked in the shade of an olive tree (the car park was divided up by them), we then continued on our journey to the reservoir at Darnius.
As we approached the reservoir we could see that the water level was well down.
It's supposed to be about 15% of the normal level due to a very dry last couple of years.
Where Ian is below the natural water level. We sat here for lunch and watched some grey clouds coming in. As it looked like the potential to rain we took the path around the edge of the reservoir to find another geocache and then back to the car. Just before we were in sight of the car park a couple of deer came bounding across the path. Quite exciting to see them leaping off into the distance just as it started to drizzle.
As we drove back what had started off as a bit, then a half of a rainbow, gradually developed into a full one. There wasn't really much rain on our route but enough to create this amazing spectacle in the distance.
By the time we returned our roads were dry and we were ready for a cuppa.
Now I can say again about the festival in Roses tomorrow - looking forward to it 😊.
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