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Today was the planned day for a bit of monk-on-a-mountain action.
It started (as ever) with Kas going for a run. She went early, which meant we were able to leave the apartment just after 9 am, albeit that we hadn’t had any breakfast.
We attended to the lack of breakfast situation by stopping at a random motorway service station. This also allowed us to fill up the trusty Volvo with some motion lotion.
Our target for the day was the monastery at Montserrat. We got there just before midday (we’d spent at least an hour having breakfast) and managed to find a parking spot quite easily, although at some distance away from the actual monastery. Meh! Walking is good for you.
Our first activity was to wander around some of the buildings trying to find a few caches and soak a few rays.
We gave up for a late lunch break at about 2 pm and had lunch in the onsite cafe. The food was actually quite good, which surprised me.
After lunch we adventured our way up the Funicular de Sant Joan for a walk around the top of the mountain. It was a warm day, so we’d already concluded we weren’t going to attempt any long stretches of walking, but up the top here we were able to trudge our way along a relatively flat path to visit a couple of little chapels. At one point, I had the direction arrow pointing to a cache but couldn’t see any way of getting there. At another point, we walked along a bit of path cut into an overhanging cliff and of a sufficiently small size that at least one of us couldn’t walk straight. And finally, there was one further cache at the top of what could be described as a rock staircase going upwards, if you were being generous. If not, then it would be better described as a bit rough. It was rough enough that Izzy didn’t fancy it, so Ami and I went over while Kas stayed with Izzy. There were some pretty spectacular views from up there though.
When we came back down to the bottom it was definitely time for an ice cream, which was consumed whilst sitting outside in the shade. After this Kas escorted the girls for the obligatory trip around the shop while I dashed off to find another cache that was some way below the incoming rack railway line.
By this time it was getting on a bit, so we did one final cache and photo stop at a rock outcrop near where we’d arrived in the morning, and then made our way down the road to the rather distant car park.
The drive back to Sant Feliu was duller than a dull thing. When we got there we made a quick stop to buy snacks and some things for breakfast before going back home to consume most of those snacks with some cold beer, whilst typing up the handful of caching logs that were due. It had been quite a long day.
While I had the PC out, I decided to pre-book some tickets to go around the Sagrada Familia. We decided we had time to go there in between leaving the apartment and needing to be at the airport on the day we were going home.