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I told myself that I would never do anything so foolish again, but in a few days' time I was bored again and longed for danger. Unfortunately I had done some fairly serious damage to my knees during my eleven hours of walking on day two, and the next day it was all could manage to make it to the next village, Torla, about an hour down the road. I couldn't walk properly for about two weeks.

I stayed in Torla for two and a half days or so, but it was so utterly dull that I managed to squeeze some bus times out of the lady in the tourist office and headed for Huesca, which, sadly, is a dump. Or at least, the one campsite in the city is a dump. The whole place is so poor, it was really depressing, and I just wanted to move on as quickly as possible from the rowdy other campers, who thought TV and firecrackers at 1am were a good laugh.

I worked out the train times, got gingerly onto a Spanish train hoping that they wouldn't mind my pass, and headed for Zaragoza, where I bought a proper ticket and took the high speed RENFE to Barcelona where I was due to meet my friend. I was two days early, but completely bored out of my single remaining brain cell.

I arrived in Barcelona at about six pm to find that the tourist office was closed and the phone number I had for the hostel didn't work. The directions I had on paper said it would take fifteen minutes to get there until I realised that that was by car. Thankfully there was a metro station just on the corner of my map, so I leapt on the nearest train to "Joanic" and collapsed in a sweaty heap in the hostel. Despite being two days early, the nice lady let me stay, which prevented me from having to sleep on a park bench that night.

Two days later I met my friend and the metamorphosis from mountaineer to tourist was complete. We went to the zoo, ate ice cream, took photos, saw the Gaudi park and generally did touristy things. It was nice.

But adventure has a way of beckoning.

Learn more about this author, Algernon Moncrieff.
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