Back home to Céret

Another late night, so we slept in very late and didn't get away until mid-morning and again opted to drive the entire 2.5 hours non-stop. Compared to yesterday, the landscape was a lot more urbanised and not as interesting, but the roads again were excellent so we made good time. We passed lots of stock trucks full of pigs. One truck had a picture of a rabbit on it, and John joked it must be full of live rabbits. It was! There are heaps of pig farms around here, and judging by the number of pigs being trucked, they must be a massive industry. You can sure smell it from time to time.

One of the 90 bulls decorating Spain's skylines, originally advertising Osborne Sherry

Yesterday, by the time we had driven down nearly 1000m off the plateau in central Spain and left behind temperatures of around 18 degrees, the temperature had risen to a rather steamy 28 degrees. Today, however, it is back to about 18 and cloudy. Any thoughts of swimming or sunbathing in St Feliu de Guixols have been banished, and we are back to wearing warm clothes instead. We slipped into town for a quick Chinese lunch (very average compared to the others we've had) and John is now having a siesta with a headache.

Our aim is to try and get this blog up, as well as catch up on many overdue emails. Other than that, tomorrow will be a day off for us, a day with no driving, no ruins, museums or other must-see to visit and a day to totally chill out. We'll be on our way again by 8.30am on Thursday morning so we reach Ceret in time to farewell our tenants before they head to Barcelona.

I guess now we are in a position to sum up how this trip has gone. I can happily say it's been brilliant. We have seen so many interesting things, learnt a great deal about history, but have also had a reasonable go at speaking Spanish and the odd bit of Basque and Portuguese, met plenty of very friendly people and loved the changing countryside. 

As for what we are looking forward to when we get home to Céret  -

• putting our feet up and reading a book
• sleeping in the same bed for more than one or occasionally two nights in a row
• a non-squeaky bed, and not the twins we have had to put up with from time to time
• not hearing the ablutions of neighbours through the wall or ceiling
• a French lunch of fresh baguette, cheese, olives, tomato and salami
• catching up with friends
• not driving (we've done 4500km on this trip, about 100km per day on average)
• The All Blacks winning the Rugby World Cup

What we will miss -

• the consistently good coffees in Portugal and Spain (noisettes, cortados, pingaos or whatever they are called)
• the very cheap prices of food, drink and accommodation in Portugal
• bumping into new people every day and seeing new sights
• the extraordinarily nice people at shops, restaurants, tourist offices and in fact everywhere
• seeing new and amazing things pretty much every day

St Feliu de Guixols turned out to have a few things to see, but it was nice to have a couple of nights in the apartment, and some downtime. We found a very pleasant pintxos bar for dinner, and had a number of pintxos and the most delicious chipirones we've had anywhere (at Bar El Gallo) served in a big brown paper cone - superb, and a fitting meal to finish our trip on.

A rather lovely black madonna and child at St Feliu de Guixols

Not a bad sunrise to mark our last morning on tour