August 4+5+6 Besalú to Banyoles to Camallera

The most striking thing about Banyoles is that it is a real city, with businesses, cars, traffic lights, lots of housing, parks, and so on.  Getting here was easy.  Short, mostly flat, not inspiring, but not so much on terrible surfaces that you are just aching for it to stop.

Burros "hiding" in the woods.  (They were very shy):

This is not any old clump of dead leaves.  This is a clump of dead leaves behind which is a way mark telling you to "turn here."

It's that time of year!

I had a plan.  Taxi to Melianta, about 4-5 k. distant on asphalt, then go past Orriols (designated stop point for the day) to Camallera, about 5+ k. take taxi back to Banyoles, then start in Camallera tomorrow to shorten the last day since I then have to lengthen it in order to get to accommodation, there being none at Sant Marti de Empúries, the official start//end of this walk, perhaps a metaphor for this walk's relative inhospitable-ness.  Plan fell through because I was not able to get a morning taxi, at least not easily, so I headed out at 5:45 and walked from Banyoles to Orriols, about 14 miles of the most boring, deadly stretch of walking ever, almost entirely on asphalt.  How John could have described this stage as wonderful, I do not know.  Anyway, arrived at 10:20, too early for a noon taxi so decided to push on as fast as I could to Camallera.  The walking conditions improved, but the temperature kept going up.  Was seven minutes late for taxi, but he waited!!  (Yes, I WhatsApped him.) Total: 18.5 miles, but flat.