Plank Road: Hike to Ballestar

Our host provides breakfast, but we told him to just drop it in the frig. He set a table for us and left us some delicious Iberian ham, salami and some cheese. It was wonderful to have the whole place to ourselves, but we have since been joined by a family from the US: parents, couple of kids and the grandparents, they will be here for three nights.

After breakfast, we took off for a really nice walk to a tiny village in the mountains. The village is in the Community of Valencia. Tortosa is in Catalunya, but we are very close to the borders of Catalunya, the Community of Valencia and Argaon. This area is far dryer than the Costa Brava, rather than cereal crops we have a lot of olive, orange and nut trees. But the area is also well treed and is really very nice. The Els Ports Mountains are fabulous.

We hiked down into a canyon and then ascended up the canyon to the little village. The village is tiny, with just a few streets, it was silent and empty, save for a couple of guys repairing a roof. The door and window hardware on the houses was one of the highlights of the buildings along with the golden rock used for the walls.

The day was gorgeous with vivid blue skies and warm sunshine, the air was cool and great for walking. This walk was just what we needed to get back into hiking mode, it was only 10 km and took 2.5 hours. When we got back to our accommodation, we sat outside with our café. Then we decided to cook.

We mega cook all at once so that we don’t have to cook again for days, other than the usual vegetables. After a long hike, we are never up to cooking, so we get it taken care of ahead of time. Just as we were chopping away, the other guests came. It worked out well that we had our mega pots of food pretty much completed when they came to use the kitchen. This is the only downside of sharing kitchen facilities, having other people mucking around in the kitchen, as we are kitchen clean freaks.

Fabulous rock