My friend's 40th birthday is imminent and as a surprise present his wife had bought him a long weekend in Spain so he could watch a Spanish football match - something he's always wanted to do. Despite me being possibly the least football-enthused friend he has she asked me to accompany him as it was impractical for her to go with them having two very young children.
We left Easter Friday afternoon, flying from East Midlands and returned Monday evening - three nights in Barcelona.
Of course I'd loaded my GPS (my older one as I was very aware of pickpockets) with all the caches in the area and on the way explained to Dean a bit more about Geocaching. I wasn't planning on commandeering his weekend but if we passed any then they would be a bonus.
As it transpired the Bank Holiday weekend brought the weather and the tourists out in their thousands and it was impractical to do any - all the caches were urban ones, in highly public places and as Dean isn't a Geocacher I didn't want to waste time hanging around for a good break in the crowds - aside from that I hate looking like a simpleton touching up a bench.
As we had to collect the football tickets we walked from the Hotel, near La Ramblas, all the way to Camp Nou (home of FC Barcelona, the title of this blog refers to one of their chants) on the Saturday morning and then again in the evening for the match. Despite this being only 2.5 miles as the crow flies West, the city is laid out in a perfect grid only it's at 45 degrees so we had to turn left, right, left, right twenty times in each direction.
I was flabbergasted to realise that by the end of the day we'd walked 16.5 miles! Thankfully I did also manage to grab two Geocaches as a bonus.
Sunday we had a day to do anything we wanted (drink) so we went to the Sagrada Familia (the incomplete cathedral), up and down La Ramblas and also down to the Marina where I got another cache. Again we were very surprised to see we'd done 8.9 miles by the end of the day.
So for the four days we'd flown 864 miles peaking at 495 mph, walked 27.3 miles (including Monday morning) and then flown 888 miles return peaking at 510 mph - a different route home and yes, I was naughty and left my GPS on the entire time.
Three caches in total and the marina one is now my furthest cache from home and also my furthest South and my furthest East - how full of dull information am I!
A great weekend away with a great mate - cheers our Dean.
No comments:
Post a Comment