Day 60: Calafell to Tarragona

October 25, 2023

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It was so nice being in the hacienda-like hotel, up by the castle, and out our window for part of the night the castle was lit up blue.

In the morning we descended through the town, and although fairly plain it was still very pleasant. We stopped at a supermarket, and being parked at a bench put front with the bikes gave me a chance to read the latest post from the Classens, which was from Barcelona. Their photos of the Gaudi buildings were excellent, and are worth looking at. Meanwhile (Dodie must have been in there a long time!) I was also curious about where EV 8 might be taking us today. Since I did not have the track in the particular phone that was in my hand, I downloaded it from somewhere on the net. That turned out to be something called routeyou.com. Two things of interest came up from that. One was that the download offered was of the "developed portions" of EV8, and I could see that that did not include where we are now! The second was that looking back at that debacle by the beach, south of the Barcelona airport, I see that EV 8 now follows the way we ended up going, that is, over the top of the airport. The displayed track was so close to what we ended up actually doing that I thought I might be looking at one of our recorded tracks. The lesson here is to be careful to always have the latest EV.

When we reached the sea side, we were able to resume cycling on the super pleasant walkway between the beach and the condos.

We came to a strange concrete bunker by the beach, with a sign explaining that this was from the Spanish civil war. I think it was the resistance, aiming to ward off attack from the fascists. Interestingly, the bunker had been painted with what looked to us like an excellent rendition of Picasso's Guernica painting, and there were further signs explaining about Guernica and even analysing it. If you compare the image on the poster to the bunker, you can judge how good the concrete copy is. Also of interest, the painting is now in Reina Sofía museum in Madrid. For 30 years from when they got it in 1992, photos were not permitted. I guess whoever did the bunker did it after last year?

Most of the sea side buildings were nondescript condos, but there were a few interesting places, like the two below.

The sea certainly was beautiful, and soothing. We stopped a couple of times, just to look at it.

Eventually we had to leave the shore, and our way had us cut under a roadway, or maybe railway, through a weird low tunnel.

We landed briefly on N-340, which is also called Via Augusta, after the Roman road from Rome to Cadiz. N-340 is fast and busy but does usually have a decent shoulder.

Calling the road the Via Augusta was not just frivolous. There are Roman ruins along the way, culminating in Tarragona, which has many many ruins.

Our track quickly directed us off N-340, and we found ourselves once more in a landscape of rock walls, enclosing olive groves. Why were these extensive walls built?

As usual, small tracks get worse until they may be unrideable. That is sure what happened here, and finally our "official" EV8 track hit a completely impassable gate!

We turned around and followed another little paved bit, but that ended too.

Pavement ended or not, we pushed on through.

This bit was steeper and tougher than it looks.

All this pushing and scrambling earned us the right to get back on N340!

We were glad when we reached a pullout where we could sit on a ledge. The pullout was at a Roman monument called the Tower of the Scipios. This was a funeral thing, with urns buried inside. The two figures carved on the outside are the Scipios (Scipios brothers) though the signage says this does not portray who is in the urns. The tower is here because its on the Roman road. We see also on the info sign, the arch we had spotted earlier, which is called the Arc de Bera.

Tower reconstruction, with hard to see pyramid roof.

This drawing of the tower from 1563 shows it was already fairly wrecked by then.

The tower has long been a tourist attraction.

I was a bit put out that a 2000 year old route name got on a road sign, while we have seen nothing of EV8. But there is a good reason, as we would soon learn that Tarragona is the oldest Roman settlement of Spain, and that it is still stuffed with numerous walls and ruins.

A bit frazzled from the N-340, we rolled into Tarragona and onto the Rambla Nova, where our hotel, the Lauria, is. The Lauria is in a stately building, like most on the Rambla. It's one from 1876 that used to be a private mansion.

The view from our window is not stellar, but that is the Mediterranean out there!

Dodie got hold of a city map listing 31 things to see. At least half are Roman sites, making this more of a Roman ruins town than even Arles. There is also a super cathedral, a Jewish quadrant, and a pile of museums. Of course, arriving late in the day we could not circle by all of these. But we did tick off about a dozen to have a crack at. One web site we read said it takes two days to check out the Roman sites. Hmm.

More than studying the details of sites, it's the ambiance and streetscapes of a city that catches our attention. So beyond any sites we may be ticking off, it's shots down and around streets that are the main focus of our walk.

There is Rambla Nova and Rambla Velia. Velia seems newer than Nova. Here is a shot down it.

A Roman column in the middle of nowhere.

The Roman city walls are from the 2nd century. They use "megaliths" - the large rocks at the base.

The walls run extensively in the city. There is a fee to get in for a really close look.

A typical look down a street. More shots like this a sprinkled among those below.

A typical door - it has a small and a large opening.

Not so bike friendly, but we were on foot!

Dodie noted the big beam in this construction.

We are going up, because the cathedral is this way.

Can't remember now the function of this building. Look at the (rather cheap) arch repair.

This arcade at the base of the cathedral steps housed the market.

What remains of the forum, which had been huge. A Roman forum includes all sorts of public buildings. The site here is 18 hectares.

We passed many other Roman ruins, some in the open and some protected in museum spaces. Not sure what the various things pictured below actually were.

The "Circus" under restoration. A circus is not an ampitheatre - we're coming to that. There should be a chariot track in the circus.

This might be part of the circus. They don't seem to want you or your camera in there.

The ampitheatre is a very dramatic site, both for its recognizable shape and its location by the sea. In these two senses it is reminiscent of the Mayan ruins at Tulum in Mexico.

We walked back around to the hotel now, and I noted ruefully that unlike Girona and Barcelona, Tarragona lacked a lot, or any, of quality ice cream places or bakeries. Let's hope that was not my #1 take away from our tour of this ancient town!

Today's ride: 41 km (25 miles)
Total: 3,003 km (1,865 miles)

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