Day 7 - La Belle France

Saturday 5th September 2015

Next stop is Andorra, another country to tick off the list. It is a horrible place, huge traffic jams at the border and through the main town. Spanish locals stocking up on cheap booze and fags and filling their tanks on the cheap petrol. There are more filling stations than churches in Andorra. Petrol is €1.09 (under 80p) per litre.
 
Coffee stop in the Pyrenees


Shopping at 2000m

We finally leave the jams behind as we head over into France. The sun is out again and the final pass out of Andorra is a huge sweeping road with wide perfect hairpins up to 2,400 metres. We stop for coffee and paninis at the French border. Customs are stopping cars and buses for contraband searches but bikes filter through without hindrance. And so we ride down off the high peaks into La Belle France.
 
Our overnight stop is at a beautiful campsite just outside the spa town of Aix les Thermes. We stock up on foodstuffs and liquor at a supermarket just down the road and feast on bread and cheese, bananas and biscuits before turning in soon after 9pm.
 
Leaving Andorra

Cloud over Andorra

Great road into France

 
Camping in Aix les Thermes

We are camped by a fast running stream that joins the river 20 metres from our tents and the sound of babbling water soon lulls me to sleep.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 3 - Twisties and Gran Reserva Ale in Asturias

Image
Tuesday 1st September 2015 We leave the campsite at Llanes and head west on the A8 motorway. It is a beautiful road, sweeping and swooping up and down the foothills of the Asturias mountains as they tumble down to the sea. It is a fairly new road, with the old road still visible in places. There are numerous viaducts bridging steep tree-clad gorges that carry the mountain streams and rivers down to the sea. There are plenty of tunnels too when the looming peaks reach all the way to the shoreline. The plan is to ride west along the coast then head off up into the mountains and spend three days wriggling through the Picos following country roads and heading in a general easterly direction.     |On the glorious back roads of the Picos We stop for fuel and food at a Repsol service station on the motorway. Petrol is €1.22 a litre, around 90p in English money. So why are we paying 20% more than that in the UK? We turn off in the small coastal tow
Read more

Day 2 - Thunderstorms, Rioja and Mick Gets Lost

Image
Monday 31st August 2015 We arrive in Santander at 11:45. It is a lovely approach into the harbour. The town tumbles down the hills that surround the inlet. No sign of my bank though.   The channel into the harbour runs past sandbanks to the east. They seem far too close for a boat this big. The town climbs up the hillsides to the west.   Sailing into Santander Santander harbour There are around a hundred bikes queuing to disembark so it takes a while. We are at the back of the lowest deck so almost last to get off. Eventually our turn comes and we head off up onto the wharf. Passport check are perfunctory and we set off on the Spanish adventure. It should have been easy to get out of the town and onto the coast road leading west towards the Picos National Park. But a combination of traffic lights and my inattention means that within five minutes I have lost Mick. Because I took a wrong lane up to a roundabout I am not sure if he
Read more

Day 20 - Homeward Bound

Image
Friday 18th September 2015 One day I will find a nice rural route from Luxembourg across Belgium and northern France to the channel ports. The motorway route is pretty awful, but it is a long ride and at the end of the tour my thoughts are turned towards home and I just want to get it over with. To be fair the first section up the A4 is okay but then comes the boring Belgian motorway with its potholes and broken tarmac, clogged with huge lorries from all over Eastern Europe, and its featureless urbanised landscapes. The skies are grey and threatening and the weather has turned cold. It is with relief that we finally turn off the highway for the last few miles through the villages of the Pas de Calais to Les Ballastieres. This is an old farm house run by Sue and Paul from England as a bed and breakfast establishment. They have a bunkhouse upstairs in the old barn with a recreation room underneath equipped with cooking facilities, tv/DVD player and various games and pastimes.
Read more