Day 11 Palafolls
We took the bus this morning to the nearby town of Palafolls, famous for it`s now defunct iron works and castle, there is nothing left to see of the iron works other than a few quarries on the sides of the hills and a couple of mine entrances, the mines were worked out before the first world war when the ore seams expired, the castle stands atop a high hill 165mtrs above sea level, it is now in ruins and to be honest it is in need of some TLC although some work was done many years ago shoring up some of the walls with concrete, effective, but not very attractive on the eye.
.Anyway as I was saying we caught the ten past ten bus from the town centre of Malgrat, the bus eventualy arriving at 10:40, about right for the local buses, they publish a timetable and run when they feel like it, the journey took about 10 minutes, we could have walked it! but we were aware of a steep climb when we got there, the bus driver was a very nice, freindly man and told us when we reached the right stop, but would not let us off until he had had a conversation with a teenager out walking his dog, when he let us off the bus, he indicated that we should speak with the young guy, which we did, he was very helpfull and spoke excelent English and walked part of the way with us and giving us directions on where to find the dirt road that would take us up to the castle, and before he left us he warned us about a dog at the farmhouse at the end of the tarmac road,telling us to say "Ola ! " to the dog or else ! When we got up to the farm about 10 minutes walking later, this great beast of a dog was lying in the shade of a tree, but when it spotted us it leapt up and came bouding toward us barking and slavering, quite scary ! we both shouted "Ola ! gotto" (Hello Dog), and the beast stopped in it`s tracks and began wagging it`s tail and still barking made it`s way back to it`s shady spot under the tree, the old farmer looked over to us and waved saying "bon dia !" and laughing, he must be used to the dog scaring the life out of tourists.
We carried on going uphill on the gravel road, it was starting to get a bit steep now and te sun was getting warmer, there had been a nice breeze down at sea level, but now we were getting into a forested part of the mountain and the wind was being blocked by the trees, the road was getting steeper, almost vertical by now, god what have we started out on ? there were lots of grasshopper/cricket things along the road, a dull green/brown colour like dead leaves they were jumping and flying huge distances for their size, about half an inch long, and flying 10to20 feet at a time, they were a beautiful irredecent blue colour when in flght, but as soon as they hit the road again they comletely dissapeared so good is their camoflage. There were also lots of enormous swallow tail butterflise, so big they could be mistaken for small birds of fallng leaves, they were either black with red or yellow markings and impossible to photograph, they just would not stay still.
Up and up and up we climbed, thank goodness we had brought our walking poles with us, we were sweating like pigs (or perspiring freely, for my more genteel readers), eventualy after about an hours walking we arrived at or destination, Castel Palafolls, wow the veiws and vistas were awe inspiring, we could see all the way to the pyranees in one direction, huges vistas of the meditereanian coast in another and miles inland in another, you could understand why the original builders in the 9th century chose this spot, watching over the main Girona to Barcelona road and the Tordera river down to the sea, the Tordera River is a tad on the optomistic, as even though it is one of the main water supplies for most of the Costa Brava region, it is nothing but sand on the surface, most of the water flows underground, in fact, we have only ever seen water there on on occasion in five or six years, and then it was just a little trickle after the snow melt in the mountains, the locals jokingly refer to it as the Missippi !
the castle itself is quite something, a ruin but it should really be cleaned up, there is fallen granite lumps everywhere making it very difficult to get around,the authotities really could put some work in to tidy it up as some parts are quite dangerous. It is constructed from the local pink granite, very similar to Cobo and Grandes Roques. I was in my element, the schoolboy in me taking over and climbing everywhere, even right to the top wall where a huge Catalan flag was flying, the wall there was about a foot thick with big drops on either side, when I got down and was at the base of the castle, I looked up thinking shit! was I realy up there? pity `er upstairs hadn`t seen me and taken a photo !
Coming back down the gravel road was as bad if not worse than going up, we were slipping and sliding all over the place, the only good thing about it was that it was downhill, it took us as long to get down as it took us to get up ! eventualy we got back to the tarmac road and our friend the dog, we got the drop on him this time though and shouted "Ola gotto !" before he spotted us, but he did get up and bark an answer and wag his tail furiously, this time the old farmer just waved, and we waved back, we made our way through the town to the bus stop for our return journey and couldn`t help noticing that the recesion has real hit here, lots of new appartment blocks empty and for sale, many new shops closed or having liquidation sales, makes you think what must the rest of Spain be like as Catalonia has been the least worst hit. The bus again was running on it`s own private schedule only 15 minutes late this time, we got out at Malgrat centre and walked back to the hotel for a shower and late siesta, it now being nearly 5 o`clock. what a day ! superb, but we won`t be doing it again tommorrow !