(Friday) A poor night last night in the tent. Despite not using the fly sheet so basically bring inside a framed mosquito net I was roasting hot and uncomfortable. We both slept in just a sleeping bag liner or with no cover at all but it made little difference.

We were discussing this today. How lovely photos of the tent are on sand dunes etc but that doesn’t tell the full story – clouds of mosquitoes, sticky , sweaty feelings, sand where it’s not meant to be ! Then, there was finding used toilet paper near to where we pitched!

Today was made by this fellow in Saint Marie, I think he is an otter (EDIT: he is a Coypu). He was beautiful and didn’t mind us as we stood and watched him for about five minutes.

We had our first glance of the Pyrenees early on. We will be in the tail end of the range on the coast. Indeed as we approached Collioure in the late afternoon we were climbing hard.

We were on the coast much more today and passed through a number of towns. Tourism is clearly the focus in this area but this meant regular availability of drinks and breaks which is important in the heat. We continue to look at our route from Barcelona the current plan is shown below. The cut in-land after Barca is to try to avoid the very busy costal roads in the south which everyone says are miserable / dangerous. This however pushes us onto a very hot route. The weather in Ubeda – a randomly chosen town on our route is shown below – 41c at 1600hrs. If we go with this route we will start cycling ultra early – it’s 34c by 1200hrs do a 0600 start would seem sensible.

We made it to Collioure about 1700hrs yesterday, hilly but extremely lovely town which was glorious in the evening. We walked to the harbour, found a little bar and listened to two musicians until midnight. The perfect end to a day. We are resting tomorrow (Saturday). We are extremely fortunate to have been given access to our friends Andre and Isabelle’s flat in Collioure. We are both incredibly grateful to them for this kindness and trust.