Amazing Andorra Catch Up Blog Part 2

Our intention was to leave Mont Louis and head towards the beaches of Spain below Barcelona, but a quick look at the map showed that we we quite close to Andorra and as the weather was nice and clear we thought that perhaps we should head that way instead.

All I knew about Andorra was that it is a small country between France and Spain and it has a football team that even England can beat.

We checked out the Aire book and there was one at El Pas De La Casa.

Off we went up a very picturesque mountain road ...

The Aire was in a large carpark which had cows roaming around it.

Elaine went and had a chat with them trying to feed them apples ...

Different ...

The town sits at 2408 metres or 7900 ft, consequently it was bloody freezing ...

Basically we did a loop inland rather than following the coast road ...

The town was totally amazing.  It is a full-on ski resort in winter but also is rammed full of duty free shops and as it sits right on the French border.  It is very popular with the French who nip across the border to buy their duty frees ...

We had a bit of a shop - of a few 'luxury' items, going cheap!  Beer, wine spirits, chocolate etc all for £35.00 $70.00 AUD 

When we woke this morning there had been a dusting of snow on the peaks ... 

We plotted a route for Tarragona, Spain and off we went.  As we drove across Andorra we noticed that there were loads of petrol stations, especially near the French border.  We were about half full which was a shame 'cos check out the price!!  That make it £0.64 a litre or $1,28 AUD ...

Check out the temp as well one bloody degree!! 

 The drive was just lovely with the most amazing scenery across Andorra ...

When we got to the Spanish border we drove through the 'nothing to declare' lane but they stopped us and checked the van for duty free gear anyway.  They seemed mainly concerned with how many fags had we got, easy ... none ...

We have had the most fantastic seven weeks in France and loved every minute of it.  We were now in Spain and we couldn't help noticing it is just a bit scruffy compared with France. 

As we dropped down towards the coast the scenery also took a turn for the worst ...

But never mind Spain to us equates to the coast and sunshine ... 

And that's just what we got when we arrived at Tarragona.  We found a great site right on the beach, well about 12 paces away!  This will do nicely for a few days ...

And here we be ...

We've put our bubble coats away again ... hopefully we won't be needing them for a while!

Having A Run In With The French Commandos!! Catch Up Blog, Part 1

We left Collioure on Wednesday morning and drove up the mountains heading for an Aire at Mont Louis.

The forecast was correct.  The weather was horrendous, as was the French driving!  They drive very fast in the dry but they don't slow down when the weather deteriorates.  I actually thought that they could be worse drivers than the Aussies but, no, on checking the accident data the Aussies still manage to kill a lot more on their roads per head of population than do the Froggies.  What makes it worse is that Australia has fantastic driving conditions weather wise.  It is a bugbear of mine and I don't know how they will ever improve the Aussie drivers.  

According to the statistics the UK comes in at 3rd lowest, France is 15th and Australia a lowly 25th.

The weather got worse the higher we went and the temperature plummeted to seven degrees ...

But we made it to our parking spot and parked up outside the village wall ...

We went for a walk around a very quiet and creepy village ...

As we walked around the wall we noticed what looked like assault course equipment on the walls ...

There were wires and gantries and cradles all over the shop ...

It got even creepier when we went into some tunnels, using the camera flash to light the way ...

We then got to what looked like an inner wall, when we spotted a chap flying across a flying fox zip wire, wearing full camo gear and carrying a sub machine gun! 

More stuff! 

We then went up another tunnel and headed for the light ...

We were met up at the top by an armed guard jabbering away in French whilst pointing to his machine gun.  We whipped out the phone and asked him to speak slowly into the google translator ...

'Do you want to eat lead English Pig?!!!' came the translation!!

 He didn't really, he just pointed to the boom gate and told us to Fck off ... he was smiling just a little.

When we got out side the main entrance we realised we had been trespassing in the French Commando training fort!

If we had gone through the front gate we would have seen the warning signs!  It just goes to show you shouldn't cut corners and go up the back passage! 

So this was our parking spot on Wednesday ...

But on Thursday morning we awoke to this ...

What a difference - we couldn't see any of this the day before ...

We went back to the fort and from a very long distance I zoomed in and got a shot at our friends ...

Meanwhile whilst we had our backs turned Bombo blacked his face up as he fancied going back inside again.....He was going Commando!