July 6, 2011

We hope to cover a bit more ground today – looking at the map it appears that there is less climbing than we have had over the past few days, which should help.

The road is very quiet – we hardly see a car all morning – and the scenery is dramatic.  We are cycling through the natural park of Montsant – an enormous valley with sandstone cliffs and rocks carved into huge boulders along either side of the valley.  As we had hoped the road is not steep and we are able to make good progress along a mainly flat road with some long downhill stretches.  The sun is absolutely blisteringly hot.  When we come out of the other side of the park we ride through orchards of peaches and hazel nuts.  The peaches have been collected and there are just a few left behind on the ground – we try one – how can somewhere so dry produce a fruit with so much juice?

We reach the main road and it is mid-afternoon; we decide to deviate from our route and take the opportunity to move along a little quicker by doing a 13 km stretch along the main road.  The traffic is light as it is the middle of the siesta.  We reach Móra d’Ebre and stop for a drink.  When we look again at the map we realise that we are about to go back into an area well off the beaten track where we may have problems finding somewhere to stay.  So we decide to stop in Móra d’Ebre – the hostal we find is very modern and really upmarket.  Looks like we should get a good night’s sleep.  We watch the news and see that warnings are being given to take extra care during the heat wave.  Not a good time to be cycle touring in Spain – we think we may look at shortening the route home if we can.