Today was the day to drive to Barcelona to pick up Ruth, who will be playing in the band next week. In hindsight, the timing of her flight could have been better since it was forecast to be a Code Orange Traffic Weekend, where many people were heading north to France after their early summer holidays and many more were heading south for their normal summer holidays. Perhaps it would have been wiser for her to arrive on Friday or Monday, but it is what it is. Could have been worse if she had arrived on Saturday where it was Code Red Traffic! In addition, the weather bureau had declared today to be a Code Orange Canicule (heat-wave). So all in all, it should be fun!

But despite some minor slow-downs between Carcassonne and Narbonne, the run was pretty hassle-free. Until we got close to the French-Spanish border, when the traffic radio station started warning us of “bouchon” (congestion) on the approach to the toll gates at the border. We soon reached the end of the queue...

and 5km (40 minutes) later we reached the start of the queue at the toll gates.

It makes one realise the value of automatic tolling with tags, like CityLink in Melbourne, where vehicles don’t have to stop to pay a toll. In fact, they have a similar tag system in France, and we have been saying for the past few years that we should get a tag. However, I recently learned that if you have a tag, you pay 1 euro extra every time you go through the toll gates. Since in most situations the time saved is miniscule (with today being an exception), it’s not really worth paying extra on all these occasions. Even today, with a 5km queue, the tag is of no advantage until you get in the vicinity of the toll gates, where you can switch lanes to go through the “tag only lane”. Until then, you are delayed just the same as if you don’t have a tag. It would only make a difference if every (or at least most) vehicles have a tag, and most lanes were tag only lanes. So, I guess we won’t get a tag, and just try to avoid code red and orange days!

As we got through the toll gates, we noticed that traffic was also queued in the other direction. I checked my odometer at the start and end of the queue, and it measured 15km long!!  That would be about a 2 hour delay! So we made a note of that for future occasions. But it’s not as bad as the queue we saw in the Rhone Valley several years ago, where the queue (in the other direction, thank goodness) measured 50km! At Orange (how appropriate), where we left to head towards Toulouse, families had taken picnic tables out of their cars and were having lunch on the motorway, since they knew they would be going nowhere for quite a while.

So we arrived in Barcelona in plenty of time to meet Ruth at the airport - or so we thought!  When we checked her itinerary that she had sent us, it showed her flight number and time of arrival, but did not show which terminal she was arriving at. So we thought that perhaps the domestic and international flights all came to a single terminal. But as we approached the airport, we noticed that the road signs started making the distinction between T1 and T2! We tried to remember what we did in 2014 when we picked up Pans on Fire from Barcelona, but nothing came to mind. So we followed the main signs, assuming that the other terminal was a freight terminal, and hoped for the best. This led us to a parking area, which we entered. Eventually after much cruising, we found a parking spot and headed for the Arrivals area. But still nothing was ringing a bell. It wasn’t until we looked at the Arrivals board that we realised that all the flights were coming from Spain and other European countries. So by now it twigged that we were at the wrong terminal. So we sent an SMS to Ruth and hoped she’s read it when she arrived (which was not very long away!).

Now we had to get ourselves out of the parking lot and find the International Terminal. Getting out of the parking lot was not easy, because every parking ticket machine we found was broken! Eventually, we found a working machine, with a long queue. And everyone seemed to be having problems, since the method of operation was not at all clear. When we got to the head of the queue, Rita spoke to the Spanish couple ahead of us who had just made the machine work, and got instructions which fortunately worked for us as well. So now we had a validated ticket, and off we went to find our car and then the exit. I know what you’re thinking, but we had no trouble finding the car! But finding the exit was another matter, and involved a bit of cruising in ever diminishing circles until an exit materialised. When we got there I noticed that many people were having troubles with the ticket reader, and were swapping lanes to find one that worked. We waited until we saw someone leave after having their ticket read, and headed for that lane. But when we placed the ticket on the glass screen for the barcode to be read, nothing happened. We tried again, and still nothing. But we had just seen it work, so I tried placing the ticket upside down on the screen with the barcode facing upwards, and voila, it worked. The reader must be above, and not below the glass screen, as is normal. Ah, the Spanish!

So now we just had to find the International Terminal. The signage was not at all helpful, but just as we were getting desperate, we saw a shuttle bus with “International” on the display above the windscreen. So Rita called "Follow that bus!”. Which I did, very closely, and eventually it lead us to a multistorey carpark which started ringing some bells. So in we went, parked and headed for the Arrivals area. As soon as we entered the pedestrian area, all the memories of meeting Pans on Fire came flooding back, so we now knew we were in the right place. We soon got an SMS from Ruth saying she had got our message, and was in the long customs queue. 40 minutes later, she popped out the Arrivals door, and everyone was relieved.

We hadn’t told Ruth, but we were planning to give her a mini “Pans on Fire” tour on the way back to Moissac, so that she could see for herself what other band members had been talking about for the past 4 years. First stop would be Cucugnan where we stopped for lunch in 2014, but because of the flight arrival time this year, we would have dinner and stay overnight this time at the same restaurant/hotel. We arrived about 6pm, just in time to settle into our rooms, and have a short walk around town before returning for dinner. The view from our room over the rooftops and up to the Cathar castle at Queribus was a great late-afternoon sight.

We were worried that Ruth might be too tired to enjoy herself, but she seemed to be on a continual sugar-high. All she could keep saying is “Is this really happening?”. When she joined us for dinner, she was full of smiles.

But the relaxation at the dinner table, and the glass or two of Rosé, brought her down to earth, and at the end of dinner she was ready to “hit the sack”. So we let her go upstairs to her room, while we went for a walk around town, especially for a walk up to the old mill. The lights and the night sky gave some good images, even for a iPhone 7+.

But I wasn’t the only one taking photos, and one of my favourite shots was of Rita taking a photo of the mill. Somehow the lighting was just perfect for this shot.