If anyone tells you that I drove for three hours to go to a small hole-in-the-mountain out of season skiing resort (with no snow) and then queued for an hour to buy a Spanish Christmas Lottery number in a ‘lucky’ lottery shop – I will of course deny it.
It just so happens that the Catalan word for lucky is ‘sort’ and Sort (with a capital ‘S’) is a real place in the Pyrenees not far from Andorra. It also just so happens that we have had a ‘puente’ a two day holidays which links to the weekend to give the impression of a four day holiday. And we went to Sort.
It was a bloody sight further away from good old Castelldefels than we had ever thought or feared. When we were fully surrounded by deepest, darkest Catalonia and felt that we were within spitting distance of the place, a signpost informing us that we were 50 kilometres away was the last thing we wanted to see. If we had known that those last 50 kilometres were over one lane, windy, precipitous roads we would have been a damn sight more depressed.
And we got the traditional little old man driver who slowed down to walking pace when confronted with anything other than a straight road.
When we finally got to Sort our GPS had a nervous breakdown. The Voice had behaved impeccably and guided us from Castelldefels to the tiny mountain enclave with her modulated accents giving a certain tone to the whole experience.
But, just as we were rounding the final hairpin bend to enter the town The Voice suddenly urged us to turn into an unmade country lane and then, when we didn’t do as She had requested She suddenly broke into a chanted litany of “Make a U turn! Make a U turn!” and wouldn’t stop!
There aren’t enough streets in Sort to get convincingly lost but we just about managed it and it was only the complete absence of parking spaces that kept us moving and indeed arguing. At my suggestion, as I slowly circled around the streets of Sort like some sort of extremely obvious sexual prowler, Toni reset the GPS to allow The Voice to recompose Herself.
Reset, She spoke with her accustomed gravitas and directed us into a car part (which we ignored) and left and right around various streets in a w2ay which indicated that She had regained Her composure and was now back in control.
She got us onto a straight stretch of road and it was only when She said, “Continue for 27 kilometres!” that we suspected that She was still a little unwell.
We returned to Sort (which we had momentarily left) and decided to find any parking space and ask a human.
On one of my previous circumnavigations of Sort I had noticed space in front of a shop within an enclosure just off the ‘main’ road. This I headed for and having ‘parked’ there urged Toni to get out and ask someone, anyone where our hotel might be.
In the way of real life, though not of literature, we were actually parked within twenty foot of the place!
Our room was perfectly acceptable and we were soon settled in and took all of ten minutes to explore the resort in which we found ourselves. A church, a river, a few shops and restaurants and flats. Job done!
It was surrounded by mountains and there was a rim of patchy snow on one visible ridge and it must be impressive in the depths of a snowy winter.
Lunch we had in a rather off-hand restaurant: perfectly respectable and unpretentious but overpriced and shoddy service. Dinner was a much more expensive experience but with a little more panache and with the sort of service which makes eating in Spain such a delight.
The Buying of the Lottery Ticket for the world famous El Gordo (The Fat One) was an absurd experience. La Bruja de Oro /The Golden Witch) is the name of a lottery office which has had a disproportionate allocation of ‘luck’ over the past years when it comes to winners of the major lottery. The result is that people from all over come to buy a ticket in this unpretentious place. The owner of the office has become a multi-millionaire on the strength of the superstition of the gullible.
Including, of course, us. We now have our tickets safely inside the little printed pockets that the office gives with each ticket purchased.
Inside this otherwise entirely unremarkable office is a large plastic three dimensional representation of a cartoon witch on a broom. As each person bought a ticket they pressed it against some part of the plastic statue. Her elongated nose was a favourite, closely followed by her hat and then her broom. No part of this representation was immune from the desperate pressing of the hopeful and I even saw one ticket holder wiping her plastic bum!
Our drive back was a delight right up until we reached the zone of the Cadà tunnel. This lengthy tunnel is something like the gateway to the Pyrenees and going through it would take us into the general area of Catalonia.
There was traffic chaos at the entrance to the tunnel which then stretched into one long, long traffic jam. At first we thought it was the result of an accident but it was merely the weight of traffic on one lane roads. What had been a pleasant open drive now turned into the soul wastingly frustrating extended wait in static traffic.
To break the journey up we called into Terrassa and were duly fed and watered before the final trip back home.
This has been an odd break, but another facet of Catalan life has been ticked off.
Bring on the next!
It just so happens that the Catalan word for lucky is ‘sort’ and Sort (with a capital ‘S’) is a real place in the Pyrenees not far from Andorra. It also just so happens that we have had a ‘puente’ a two day holidays which links to the weekend to give the impression of a four day holiday. And we went to Sort.
It was a bloody sight further away from good old Castelldefels than we had ever thought or feared. When we were fully surrounded by deepest, darkest Catalonia and felt that we were within spitting distance of the place, a signpost informing us that we were 50 kilometres away was the last thing we wanted to see. If we had known that those last 50 kilometres were over one lane, windy, precipitous roads we would have been a damn sight more depressed.
And we got the traditional little old man driver who slowed down to walking pace when confronted with anything other than a straight road.
When we finally got to Sort our GPS had a nervous breakdown. The Voice had behaved impeccably and guided us from Castelldefels to the tiny mountain enclave with her modulated accents giving a certain tone to the whole experience.
But, just as we were rounding the final hairpin bend to enter the town The Voice suddenly urged us to turn into an unmade country lane and then, when we didn’t do as She had requested She suddenly broke into a chanted litany of “Make a U turn! Make a U turn!” and wouldn’t stop!
There aren’t enough streets in Sort to get convincingly lost but we just about managed it and it was only the complete absence of parking spaces that kept us moving and indeed arguing. At my suggestion, as I slowly circled around the streets of Sort like some sort of extremely obvious sexual prowler, Toni reset the GPS to allow The Voice to recompose Herself.
Reset, She spoke with her accustomed gravitas and directed us into a car part (which we ignored) and left and right around various streets in a w2ay which indicated that She had regained Her composure and was now back in control.
She got us onto a straight stretch of road and it was only when She said, “Continue for 27 kilometres!” that we suspected that She was still a little unwell.
We returned to Sort (which we had momentarily left) and decided to find any parking space and ask a human.
On one of my previous circumnavigations of Sort I had noticed space in front of a shop within an enclosure just off the ‘main’ road. This I headed for and having ‘parked’ there urged Toni to get out and ask someone, anyone where our hotel might be.
In the way of real life, though not of literature, we were actually parked within twenty foot of the place!
Our room was perfectly acceptable and we were soon settled in and took all of ten minutes to explore the resort in which we found ourselves. A church, a river, a few shops and restaurants and flats. Job done!
It was surrounded by mountains and there was a rim of patchy snow on one visible ridge and it must be impressive in the depths of a snowy winter.
Lunch we had in a rather off-hand restaurant: perfectly respectable and unpretentious but overpriced and shoddy service. Dinner was a much more expensive experience but with a little more panache and with the sort of service which makes eating in Spain such a delight.
The Buying of the Lottery Ticket for the world famous El Gordo (The Fat One) was an absurd experience. La Bruja de Oro /The Golden Witch) is the name of a lottery office which has had a disproportionate allocation of ‘luck’ over the past years when it comes to winners of the major lottery. The result is that people from all over come to buy a ticket in this unpretentious place. The owner of the office has become a multi-millionaire on the strength of the superstition of the gullible.
Including, of course, us. We now have our tickets safely inside the little printed pockets that the office gives with each ticket purchased.
Inside this otherwise entirely unremarkable office is a large plastic three dimensional representation of a cartoon witch on a broom. As each person bought a ticket they pressed it against some part of the plastic statue. Her elongated nose was a favourite, closely followed by her hat and then her broom. No part of this representation was immune from the desperate pressing of the hopeful and I even saw one ticket holder wiping her plastic bum!
Our drive back was a delight right up until we reached the zone of the Cadà tunnel. This lengthy tunnel is something like the gateway to the Pyrenees and going through it would take us into the general area of Catalonia.
There was traffic chaos at the entrance to the tunnel which then stretched into one long, long traffic jam. At first we thought it was the result of an accident but it was merely the weight of traffic on one lane roads. What had been a pleasant open drive now turned into the soul wastingly frustrating extended wait in static traffic.
To break the journey up we called into Terrassa and were duly fed and watered before the final trip back home.
This has been an odd break, but another facet of Catalan life has been ticked off.
Bring on the next!
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