Campervan Therapy

We drive beside the Ebro Valley’s green waters from Tortosa, but sheer drama builds as we climb up into the Alta Terra, the Els Ports National Park, on the border between Catalonia and Aragón.

Rust-coloured cliffs are sculpted by the elements into obelisks, cones, and mysterious giant creatures. As we near Arnes, the mountain crags look down on fields of ancient olive and almond trees.

Camping Els Ports lies beneath the town of Arnes, which grows up out of the hillside, its ancient colonnaded town hall and church more reminiscent of fortresses. They preside over alleyways, washing blowing in the breeze from balconies of solid, stone houses.

It never ceases to amaze me how a narrow, unpromising grocer’s doorway leads to an Aladdin’s Cave of local food treasures in these small towns.

We buy boiled octopus, and (this is camping after all) prepped new potatoes with Provençal herbs. There’s a plethora of tomato varieties, courgettes and aubergines not swelled out of all proportion like much supermarket veg.

A weather front splits the sky into two halves (to our right, blue skies, to our left purple fury). On the laneway between the ancient olive groves, poppies are torn by the coming storm. We dive into the van as thunder bombards us and rain pelts us, rivers running through the campsite within minutes.

It’s got to be a sprint to the tiny bar, two massive televisions on its wall, both playing different channels. The next morning blows in cheery, with a blue and white mottled sky.

We follow the signs for the Via Verde on our bikes. Soon we’re cycling through wildflower dotted lanes. A fallow field is full of gobbets of limestone. It’s difficult to see how preparing the field wouldn’t break the plough.

But when the road becomes a rollercoaster on the edge of a gorge, all musing ends. I clench the handlebars, terror filling me. I dismount to walk the bike (which is not the lightest in the world) up and down the inclines as I only learnt to ride a bike in my fifties.

Only then can I appreciate the cliffs, the Mediterranean pines clinging to thin soil all the way down sheer drops, the wildflowers, butterflies and the smell of hot pine cones – so evocative of these stone and sun filled Mediterranean mountains.

After a steep decline and a bit of slip-sliding over slick limestone, and wading through a flowing ford, I’m stunned by the River Algars rushing down the mountain to run around limestone pavements to meet the Riu dels Estret’s emerald waters.  

It’s at this point Seán checks his App and discovers that although the signs tell us we’re on the Via Verde’s flat old railway track, we haven’t even reached it yet. When we finally do, we pass the old Arnes d’Lledó station, with its majestic eagle mural.

The sight of a dark tunnel full of unseen creatures and a narrow track which runs between two sheer drops, the lowering clouds above and grumbles of the thunder gods decide things for me – so our adventure ends without us ever really cycling on the Via Verde. But the fun for us is in the surprises offered up by any outing