15th November 2016. Sitges, Spain.

Each morning our day begins with a game of Russian Roulette with the coffee pot (or coffee roulette as I like to call it).   As Mark can testify from the mouthful of grouts he got, the filter on our cafetiere is a bit temperamental, it’s fine for the first two cups but then the fun begins, if we don’t stop pouring quickly enough the last cup gets a large dose of coffee grouts.  It adds a bit of excitement to our breakfast. This morning I had an even more surprising start to the day.  I try to write up the blog in the morning while Darren is still asleep, I hadn’t been able to do that for a couple of days so I’d been writing it up during the journey from Pineda and had saved it when we arrived at Sitges.  I was very happy to be up to date but when I opened the Word document this morning a HUGE chunk of it was missing from when we arrived at Pineda, it would be an understatement to say I was a little upset!  I decided enough was enough and left Darren trying to find out what had happened.  While I was having a shower my knight in shining armour came to my rescue again and although he didn’t find everything I’d written he managed to find most of it hidden away in a strange document on the lap top.

We cycled into Sitges this morning, as per usual we had to cycle down a hill to get to the sea but it wasn’t very far and as the weather is beautiful it was a lovely ride.

The seafront was even more beautiful than I remembered it during our fraught drive along it yesterday.  We stopped and watched surfers doing their stuff and people doing yoga along the beach, one brave soul (or should that read show off) was standing up on the break water doing his yoga with the sea crashing into the rocks beneath him.

We cycled further along the promenade which strangely turned into compacted sand as we got closer to the town then reappeared as a paved area further along (what happened there then?)  We stopped a few times so I could take photos of the statues along the promenade and of the two parakeets (or the pair o’ keets as Darren insisted on calling them which turned out to be quite apt as they seemed to be the only parakeets there) sitting in the palm tree.

There was a grand church up on the hill and we watched as people raced up the steps trying not to get soaked as the waves broke against the cliff and sprayed the steps.  We couldn’t face carrying the bikes up all the steps so we cycled round the lanes and hoped we could reach the church that way.  We could and as we cycled along the side of it we could see a beautiful archway above the street joining two buildings.  It was a very pretty area.

We cycled into the next bay, looked at the restaurants and decided they were too expensive so cycled back through the little back streets.  It was too shady to sit in the town so we went back to the seafront and bought a sandwich.  Luckily for Darren (or was it just good planning) the sandwich shop was right next to the ice cream shop  so after we’d eaten our sandwich we scooted across to the table next to us and went in to buy an ice cream.  The young man behind the counter was such a happy person and he couldn’t have been more helpful if he’d tried.  I told him how lovely it was to be served by someone so cheerful it was so nice to see someone helping to brighten everyone elses day and he said he really enjoyed his job, there was no denying that.

Having stuffed our faces we cycled back along the promenade and I’m proud to say back up the hill (unlike the teenagers as they make their way to college, they push their bikes up the hill then hop on again at the top, how lazy!)  We’d intended moving on but decided to stay another night and just chill out.  We hadn’t realised quite how chilled we nearly became!

I needed some power to edit my photos and as our neighbours were using their generator we thought this might be the perfect time to try ours out so Darren got it going and I got on with the photos.  After a while (several hours!) I said I could smell fumes but Darren told me he couldn’t and I kept going with the photos, suddenly (some time later) the alarm started screaming at us telling us there was carbonmonoxide in the van!  (glad to see that it works!)

That was a scary moment, thank goodnes Darren had installed the alarm, it wouldn’t stop screaming for a long time after we’d opened all the windows and doors and turned off the generator.  Darren tells me he needs to move it further away from the van next time we use it (and not point the exhaust at the van either) but I have to say I’m not that keen on using it again, apart from the risk of carbonmonoxide poisoning to us or anyone nearby, I’m not sure where we could use it without annoying the neighbours with the noise.

Once I’d got over our scare we sat and read for a while.

I’m reading a great book called The Long and Whining Road by Simeon Courtie which is about Simeon and his wife and young daughters travelling round the World in a VW campervan busking Beatles songs to make money for UNICEF.  They had just started their travels through India and it reminded me that we hadn’t watched Indian Summers yet so we spent the rest of the evening watching some of that.