Girona; Thursday, 03 November, 2022

I’d stayed overnight at a hotel near Hatton Cross tube station as it was an early flight from Heathrow. In the original plan I’d walk to Hatton Cross and take the tube, which is free, into Terminal 5. However, the weather overnight and into the morning was atrocious and it was still hammering it down at 5:30 when I got up so instead of the free journey into the airport I decided to wait for the 06:00 hoppa bus and pay the £5.50 to avoid getting wet.

I must have arrived at the peak of the morning rush as there were lengthy queues for security and the terminal was heaving everywhere, but after about 45 minutes it quietened back down considerably. I wandered down to my gate about 10 minutes before boarding was due to start and ended up sitting there for nearly 50 minutes as boarding got delayed due to the plane having to wait for the limited number of cleaners on duty.

Not that it mattered that much, my connecting train from Barcelona wasn’t due to leave until 15:50 giving me plenty of time to make the connection, and hopefully – as I’d purchased a full fare ticket – move my train forward if we were early.

By the time I reached baggage reclaim it was 12:20 Spanish time so whilst waiting for my bag I went onto the Renfe website to change my ticket, only to find that whilst I had a fully changeable ticket it doesn’t work when all the earlier trains are fully booked. I was stuck with my booked train.

It did mean I had a much more relaxed journey into town as I had a couple of hours to play with, so rather than paying for a local transport ticket to get the metro from Terminal 1 I hopped on the free inter-terminal bus round to Terminal 2 and claimed my free suburban rail ticket that came with my AVE ticket. Of course, I arrived at the station at T2 just as the previous train was leaving so I had a 30 minutes wait there before I continued my journey into Barcelona.

I arrived at Barcelona with still nearly 2 hours until my departure, but it did mean I could use the Sala Club to wait in with a nice cold beer and some snacks to while away the time before heading through the security check and down to my platform for my train onto Girona.

The train zipped through the Catalan countryside making the journey in just 40 minutes. From the high speed station in Girona I walked the kilometre or so over to my hotel to checkin and then after freshening up headed into town.

I wandered over to the Old Town of the city located on the opposite bank of the Riu Onyar and walked through the narrow lanes and steep cobbled paths up to the Cathedral steps and then on up to the city walls.

You can walk along the top of the city walls which, after being partially destroyed in the 19th Century to enable city expansion, have been restored to a near full circuit from leading up the hill from the river and then back down again. I walked pretty much all the length of the walls to the far end, only to find that they had started to lock the walls up for the night, so had to walk the whole way back only just managing to get off the walls before being locked in for the night.

I then headed back down into the lower part of the old town for a quick bit to eat before walking back to the hotel for a well earned sleep.