Sunday, July 19 : After a great AEDST'98 weekend in Massos de Pals, Mullie, Steve, Ernst and I decided to join the local folks on their way back to Barcelona, so  early afternoon we took off for a nice ride to the city. Karina and Ramon had offered us to stay for the night at their place while Mullie and Steve crashed at Celine's. In the Evening we all met at the beach for some seafood and beers, later that night we rode over to the local HA's bar "The Other Place", before around 2am we finally hit the bed. Monday, July 20 : After a fine Breakfast Ernst and I said Goodbye to Karina (Ramon was at work already) and we left Barcelona heading towards Andorra. The A18 took us out of the city, and when we had passed Sabadell and Terassa we continued on the N150 to El Borras, joined C1411 which lead us to Manresa. Somewhere in that area we had a short stop where Ernst pointed to huge clouds at the sky, right in front of us. He thought they must be smoke, which I just couldn't believe, so huge and still so far away they were, but it turned out he was right... 
 We continued on C1410 towards Solsona, and when we had passed Cardona, there was no more doubt about it: the forrests were burning!! Very soon low flying firefighter planes told us that we had to be very close, and indeed a few kilometers further everything right and left the road was already burned to ashes. When we saw a parked police car we stopped and asked the cop it if was safe to continue, and he said it was. Well, it was, but pretty scary nevertheless to pass such huge fires in such a short distance.
 And it even got worse... All the time the wind was coming from behind us, and when we had passed the fires and reached Solsona, the sky became an apocalyptic red-brown color and everything including ourselfes got covered with white ashes. We just kept going at a somewhat higher pace, the C1313 leading us north, up the Pyrenees to Andorra. We didn't spent much time there and stopped only once at Andorra Harley-Davidson. Even their bikes had a thin coat of white ashes on them and the sky was still dark. At that time we decided to rush on until we get to see some blue sky again. But all across the Pyrenees and back down that awesome, fast and twisty Route N20 on the french side of the mountains we were riding in this depressing light, and it wasn't until Toulouse that we finally could see some patches of blue sky again. We continued on N20 past Toulouse, switched onto N113 and at Agen we put up our tents for the night.