The sun will come out to Mollo Pyrenees 2

In the style of all films that have animals as the star, the gold crest was trying to tell us something. The tiny beautiful creature was quite unafraid of three gawping ramblers as it sang away to us, not trying at all to escape. What it was saying we all too soon realised when Ray had a look at the map. We were off the trail. Not lost, but simply off course.

The route is marked along its course. This bit was following the GR10, so the marking was a miniature flag of Poland, a white strip above a red one. The only problem is that they are sometimes on trees and sometimes on rocks. Occasionally they not very obvious and they are at irregular distances and of course it dawns on us from time to time that we have not seen one for quite a distance. This is unsettling news because it means going back to the last one and correcting our error. This is what the gold crest was trying to tell us.

We were making our way from Setcases to Mollo, another Spanish hill village. The weather was bright although it clouded over as they day and we progressed and our picnic lunch was held at 5200 feet, as calculated by Dave’s altimeter. But the climbing was behind us now, with Setcases, our start point, at a height of 4166 feet. It seemed much more of a climb at the time. But it was downhill from now, a fact I celebrated with two falls in rapid succession. Soon it was the Chupa Chup moment. Above Mollo we sat sucked our Chupa Chups trying to buy time, before we were sucked into the whirlwind lifestyle we would find in the streets of Mollo.

We needn’t have bothered.

Mollo was shut. There was a bar, but not the pavement type we could relax into. We entered the hotel which was favourable. We enjoyed four Estrella. We strolled the streets. It looked, if the appearance of the huge beams of wood that had arrived on the trailer of a lorry, as if Mollo was next in line for the Setcases makeover in wood and Ronseal. We soon ran out of diversions in trying to fill the time between what was then until 8.30, the time for ‘soper’. Buying the picnic would take up sometime.

As in Setcases, the shops were to a casual observer closed, but the general grocer’s opened, as we must have gazed so forlornly through the darkened window. Perhaps that was the trick.

My Spanish was challenged to order café and hot chocolate. It tuned up, so I considered it a success. When ‘soper’ did arrive it had a mixed reception. The red wine was chilled. This was only rectified by the third bottle. The carnivore received a sad sausage accompanied by white beans. His humour was not lifted when the sad sausage was rearranged to look like a smiley sausage.

Breakfast made up for the limited success of the night before. Omelettes, which solely by their location must have been Spanish omelettes, tomato bread, fruit, cold meats and yoghurt were a good start. Some fresh bread that must rank as the driest in Europe was bought on the morning as we set off for Prats de Mollo La Preste which is in France. How you tell the fresh bread from the stale must be a skill in itself. I have never looked forward to French bread with so much zeal.