Spain: Mulhacén (5/28)

After spending the night on top of the Portuguese peak we decided to do the drive to the Spanish peak in one day. Partly to save time and partly because sleeping at altitude is a lot cooler.

We had some culinary adventures in Portugal, Olly had accidentally purchased ‘nabisca’ which translated to turnip greens. This looks deceptively like spinach but tastes like eating your mum's garden plants. We also bought (on purpose) what translated to ‘japanese aubergines’. These are purpler longer aubergines which having a higher skin to flesh ratio compared to normal aubergines were delicious.

The drive between peaks was 9.5 hours, the last 1.5 hours of which was a series of hairpin turns up the mountain through a series of small villages clinging to the mountainside. We even had to stop at one point to navigate around a parade complete with brass band and daytime fireworks.

After the last village the narrow tarmac road became a gravel track and our van got a real shake down. Luckily we only lost one piece of cladding which was loose anyway. We settled in for the night ready for peak day.

After an early start we headed up through the pine forest towards the peak. We were following a description and GPS track we found online which made a loop walk. There was a pleasant incline for the most part and we made it to the top (3479m) in just under 4 hours. This was a similar ascent gain to Ben Nevis but just at a higher altitude. (NB Olly is standing on a higher rock in our summit photo, I'm not that small).

We spotted a heard of chamois (high altitude goats) and were being careful not to scare them, as they seemed shy. That was until we saw one at the summit eating discarded banana skins and orange peel unbothered by our presence.

We ate our sandwiches took some photos and headed down the other side of the peak on some steep scree zigzags. We soon lost some altitude and then followed a gentle track, traversing around, meeting a junction we‘d passed on the way up. We decided to complete the loop, this might have been a mistake as it was now very hot and the second half of the loop back to the car seemed a lot longer. We actually walked 28km (17.4 miles) in total.

Back at the van we had bucket showers and some celebratory warm french rosé before having an early night. We had been having a problem of flies coming into the van. Every evening we had to spend 10 minutes shoeing the flies out of the side window before going to sleep. Olly had attempted to make fly traps with duck tape but the flies weren't interested and we decided to remove them before I got my hair stuck in one.

The next morning we made our way back down the steep road stopping for some breakfast in the first town. The restaurant owner didn’t speak English but we managed to use Google Translate to ask for “breakfast” which turned out to be toasted bread with tomatoes and cured ham which was very tasty.

Our next stop was Xàtiva, a small town on the outskirts of Valencia which had some climbing nearby. Valencia is famous as being the home of paella, we decided this should be out first meal out of the trip and scoured the internet for a good restaurant. We arrived in the town and headed to our carefully selected restaurant, unfortunately it was closed on a Tuesday. As were, as far as we could tell, all the other restaurants selling paella. This left us with the only option of buying cold paella off the deli counter in the supermarket. Luckily it turned out to be very tasty.

Being inland in Southern Spain was very warm and we had a sweaty night’s sleep as the van isn’t designed for conducting away body heat. Undeterred in the morning we headed to the climbing location and started on the easiest route. A 4a called El Rio, this was considerably harder than I was expecting and was made more difficult by the 30 degree blazing sunshine. We then hid in the woods for a couple of hours until the wall came into shade and managed one more route Es Carlota (5a) which was also hard.

We then decided to get a few miles under our belts towards our next destination Barcelona. We stopped half way at a little seaside resort town, without the tourists. I’m not sure when tourist season starts, but early June is very quiet. It was very windy and we decided to hide in the van rather than be sand blasted on a walk along the beach.

Olly had initially been against the cool box but on having his first van cooled beer he decided that it was actually a good idea. Similarly I had been against bringing the whole 130 piece socket set with us, but having needed to use an obscure socket to tighten the handle of our frying pan, it has now been justified.

Our next stop was Barcelona, instead of stressfully driving into he city centre where there is limited parking and lots of horror stories about van break ins we decided to stop at an actual campsite.

This meant we could bus into town, but also refill our water and have our first hot showers in 10 days!

We did the usual tourist things, mainly walking around the city looking at the Antoni Gaudi architecture. Unfortunately tickets to go inside La Sagrada Familia were sold out so instead we sat on some benches and watched the cranes lift bits of masonry. The large unfinished Catholic church is set to be finished in 2032 but was started in 1882.

Whilst in Barcelona we met up with one of Olly’s old work colleagues and had a pleasant evening eating tapas and catching up over a few beers.

Our campsite crib sheet had said the last bus was at 10pm but by consulting Google we worked out we could get two buses and leave at 11.30. This was all going to plan until at the university hospital where we had to change buses we read the bus timetable and the bus Google suggested appeared not to exist. The bus time came and went with no bus. So Olly decided to install the Barcelona version of Uber on his phone. No one accepted our ride request on this app or another he installed.

So we had a few options; a 3.5 hour walk, wait until the next bus at 6am or go into the hospital and hope they had a number for a local taxi. We went for option 3 and were pleasantly surprised the the taxi we rang with our limited Spanish vocabulary arrived just 30 seconds later.

Safely back at the campsite we turned in and just about managed to leave the following morning before kicking out time.

We then started the long drive to Croatia, I don’t think I have ever had a route on my Google maps which the duration time has been in days before.

As we neared the French border we spotted a very scantily clad hitch hiker in a very small bikini and high heels. A little further on there was another and another and we realised they were prostitutes. I was surprised as I wouldn’t have expected them to be so blatantly selling their wares at midday on the main road.

After doing some googling we worked out that prostitution is legal in Catalan but not in neighbouring France, hence in addition to the cheap cigarettes, alcohol and fuel people are crossing the border to use the brothels. There is some controversy surrounding local brothel's as although prostitution is legal the brothels have been linked to human trafficking.

We continued our journey east in the direction of Croatia.