Day 76 [8]
Saturday June 18
Canet-Plage - Argeles-Sur-Mer
Homage to Catalonia

The most uneventful day so far, it says in my scrawled notes. After the last couple of days, that's much to be desired. I pack a small bag and we check out and hope that the reception staff can use their influence to find us a hotel on this hot summer Saturday. I would like to get to Collioure - but both hotels linked to this one are complet. We settle for Argeles, which leaves my schedule tight to make Spain by Monday. We also book at Collioure for Sunday and Monday nights, which means I'll have to walk and travel back each day. This all takes a bit of time, because Constanz behind the desk obviously knows everyone on the coast and has to keep up with the news.

I bring down the bags and ask for a taxi, breezily add that madame will pay, and set off about 10am. Today will be a hunt for shade, so I walk on a street parallel with the front. But the cycle path along the spit to St Cyprien offers no respite. Apart from the strange village de pecheurs, a restored village of traditional fishing huts, which I duck into - or rather don't, misjudging the height of the lintel and nearly knocking myself out.

Lots of people are arriving for a day at the beach and parking. At last a good word can be said for white vans: in this unremitting sun, they provide the only shade available. It may not be poetic squeezing up to the side of a Transit, staring at the remaining white patches of snow on top of the mountains, now just ahead, but it's all that's on offer. A woman sets off for the beach with towels, chairs, bags, baskets et al. Her little daughter very helpfully carries her own cuddly toy.

St Cyprien has a nice-looking cafe on the beach, but they're still hosing it down. So I stop on the main street at a bar cum bookies. All eyes inside are on the tirage. Old guys drive up or, as often, are driven by their wives. I set off again through the town, seeking hedges, high walls anything. There's brisk lunch activity and I'm tempted by moules frites at a bijou little place with a terrace overlooking the marina. But I take my frugal lunch of pain au raisin and water under a few trees next to a very noisy yacht club and look at the boats, their masts making geometric patterns against the blue sky. When do they get used?

The road out of town has a thoughtful avenue of trees. Then it's the same deal as before: a road or track alongside the main road to Argeles. It's a watershed of sorts: I am now on my last map - 2549 OT Banyuls/Cote Vermeille. And water is what I'm mostly thinking of as I dash from tree to bush to tree; disappearing water in my bottles; and the shrieks coming from the nearby Aqualand of those submerging themselves in it. It's so quiet on the outskirts of Argeles, you would hear the water hissing on the unnaturally green lawns. I find a small patch of shade for a break - to find myself opposite a campsite pool of clear blue water.

The hotel is on the beach - one of the oldest on this coast - but we're in the annex across the road on a shady fir lined street. After a couple of poolside beers - now it comes to it, I can't be arsed to jump in - we call home to find my son at a BBQ in Worksop - it's hot as hell there too. Why did we bother?

A wander on the beach reveals an interesting plaque just outside th hotel, commemorating the retirada, the long trek take by the republican refugees over the Pyrenees at the end of the Spanish civil war in 1939. The plaque marks the beginning of an internment camp that ran a kilometre up the beach and received 100,000 refugees. There were camps at St Cyprien and Le Bacares also. A local map shows a Spanish cemetery situated just out of town. The Spanish ties are deep here. At the end of my walk, as at the beginning, it seems like almost an indulgence to be rich and walking for "pleasure".