11th November 2016. Palamós, Spain.
We were DEFINITELY leaving today but instead we just snuggled up in bed and decided to stay another day.
When we eventually got out of bed we decided to go and explore the next town along. It was glorious weather and we had a nice gentle cycle along the promenade to the end where we sat on the rocks and watched the boats sailing and someone paddleboarding.
I’d been watching and photographing the sailing boats and the beautiful vista for a long time when the paddleboarder finally got over towards the beach so I thought I’d zoom in for a more interesting composition, I really MUST stop doing that for the sake of my eye sight! When I looked at the photo for a brief moment it looked like the person was wearing skin coloured leggings, then another hideous memory shot into my head, PLEASE DON’T LET IT BE ANOTHER NAKED BOTTOM LIKE THE MAN IN THE SURF IN SETE! It turns out she wasn’t completely naked but her backside HAD swallowed the string of her bikini bottom so it appeared she was wearing a t-shirt and nothing else, I suppose to all intents and purposes that’s exactly what she was doing! (like the Stranglers sang “Down on the beaches, just looking at the peaches”, though being out of season they are few and far between)
I tried to find a much nicer sight to wipe that vision out of my head and looking around I saw it. Over on the beach was a dad with his little boy, both in wetsuits, the little one was struggling to help his dad carry a windsurfing kite off the beach and then they returned with standup paddleboards. It was so lovely to see a dad spending time with this son.
As we cycled past them a bit later the child’s mum was walking along the promenade with a baby in a pram, she’d obviously been in the sea at some point too because she was wearing a wetsuit. What a great way for a family to spend an afternoon. The little boy was at that moment being towed out over the little waves by his dad, it appears he’d been trying to get out to the flat water for the last 10 minutes.
The promenade was great to cycle along, the bridge was even better it made a great sound as the wheels of the bikes went over it. I/we stopped every so often (well I couldn’t just ride off and leave her could I!) to take photos of the sculptures that were placed along the sea front and we eventually arrived at our intended destination, a little restaurant we’d seen on the beach.
It was a very basic affair but so nice to be able to sit and chill out in the sun watching the boats coming into the harbour, there was also a very cute fluffy dog laying under a chair by one of the tables, it seems he belonged to one of the people working there.
After we’d been there a short while Darren pointed out a lady in a wetsuit with diving weights round her waist, she was carrying a big white nylon bag and we wondered what she’d got in her bag. Our curiosity was assuaged a little while later. She took the bag into the kitchen and about 10 minutes later the waitress came out carrying a plate of prepared sea urchins which she took over to her friends.
It was so lovely to see the reaction that provoked. As the waitress approached the table one of her friends suddenly noticed what she was carrying, she was overjoyed and squealed with delight at being presented with such a lovely gift. She seemed truly grateful and it sounded like she was thanking the waitress and the kitchen staff profusely. Judging by the smiles on the faces of the people as they ate the sea urchins it must have been a great experience.
It was wonderful to see food taken to a table when it had been gathered only 10 minutes previously AND to have seen the woman who had dived for it. I’ve never seen that before.
We had a nice meal and then decided to make a dash back to the van as the dark clouds gathered overhead and the owner started pulling the canvas side panels down in case it started raining.
We had a relatively quick shop at the biggest Lidl we’ve ever seen (I was hoping they might have a hoover but they let us down, lol!) then shot off back to the van, well I say shot off, by the time we got halfway up the hill to the van I’m sure I was being overtaken by snails (it was a long lonely wait at the top, and I had most of the shopping!), I didn’t know it was possible to balance moving that slowly, but I got to the entrance eventually!
I reckoned we’d earned ourselves a lazy evening, we were going to watch a film as Gethan had mentioned that Morgan was kindly paying for us to have Netflix but we ended up doing the backdated photos on the blog and almost six months since we started the blog we finally got it up to date. HIP, HIP, HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!