After leaving Barcelona we started moving around the coast eastwards. Club Nautica Arenys - a nice little marina with a welcome pool, Palamos - a biggish town where we anchored out for a few days then attempted to stay in the bay of Roses area. The marinas here were either booked out or too small for us and the bays were not sheltered from southerlies. Finally we managed to book a mooring buoy at Montjoi. We turned up at 11.00 am only to find that it was booked from that night not for the day! It seems that they rent them daily and then nightly - it's doesn't say this on the booking app. We had to clear off for 6 hours so, as every little bay was crowded out, we just went a mile offshore and sat there, had lunch and waited for our buoy to become free. Never heard of this day and night booking thing before.

After a couple of bumpy but quite safe nights we moved around to Cadaques (pronounced Cadackers). This was a big mooring field, very well managed and provides a free water taxi service on call which was really good especially as we have a puncture in our dinghy which is leaking through the patch that Max and Peter did. We need to get better glue. Cadaques is a lovely little town of white buildings and blue blue clear water. We took a little tourist train to the next bay where Salavador Dali had a house he lived in till his wife died and he moved away. Unfortunatley you have to book way ahead to go in and we had no real idea when we would be there. We did get to see it from the outside though. Shaunagh had sent her passport off from Barcelona to get a visa for Gibraltar and it was returned via Borja in Palma to the Roses DHL office. Peter and I took a bus round to Roses to get it one day but didn't really see much of Roses though by the time we collected it and got the bus back. Normally we might have stayed for dinner and a look around but Peter is on a major diet and scared of eating out!! He's decided that Shaunagh's cooking is far better for him. We did however have a couple of very good meals ashore in Cadaques.

The next stop was a buoy at Banyuls sur Mer just over the border and now in France. A super little bay and town where we only spent one night as we wanted to catch a weather window for the 9 hour trip across the notorious Gulf de Lion. This Gulf has periods of the most dreadful winds that have got to be avoided at all cost, not helped by the fact that they are temperamental in their timing.

The crossing was supremely uneventful and we arrived in Port Camargue to sit out the predicted foul wind that then didn't eventuate! This marina was huge - 5000 berths. Like a small city - we needed our bikes just to "drop by the office" to do paperwork