Pyrenees 5. Driving right across Spain in only 15 minutes

 

 

at the Col du Puymorens, Spanish Broom with a little snow thrown in 

the village of Orlu

this tiny village, Nohedes is in a closed valley and about 40 minutes
drive from the main road.  Even so, it has a restaurant.

It has started to become very hot during the days with the heat persisting through the night.  It certainly is a lot hotter than we were expecting and is forecast to get hotter still.  Now on our westward headed journey we aim for Ax-les-Thermes which you might rightly conclude is a spa town.  In the late 1800’s and into the twentieth century it was a very popular spot especially with the British who came to ‘take the waters’.  There are multiple springs of varying temperatures bubbling out of the ground and still a variety of spa watering holes to laze in.  There’s a public footbath on the edge of the market with hot water to bathe feet in after a heavy shop.  The water rises at one end, flows through a roughly 50 by 15 feet pool and then disappears.  Quite a hot footbath too.   Ax itself sits in a very picturesque location in a valley hemmed in by vast hills covered in forest.  It’s pleasant enough but has a faded grandeur about it as have several other spa towns we’ve been through.   We don’t understand why every spa town also seems to have at least one casino.  Do any of you know ?

 

Ab-fab in Ax

Heather (for scale) with a Yellow Turks-cap Lily,
the only one we'd seen in three weeks

and a close up of one of the flowers

There are a couple of valleys to explore near to Ax, one of which is a narrow gorge.  On a particularly hot day the narrow, shaded and dampish gorge was a real treat until we had to cycle back up out of it on an unshaded dusty track to our van.  Couple of decent orchids though.  I can tell you the air-con is a life saver but it only works while we’re driving.

 

that dampish gorge (plus Heather for scale again)

Man Orchid, only about six inches tall

Military Orchid

Many of the campsites we’ve stayed on have lots of lime trees and with the heat and the limes in flower at the moment the scent wafting about has been wonderful.  We just have to make sure we’re not parked under one because they exude sticky deposits which is quite difficult to get off paintwork.  In our limited experience, Spanish sites are still frequently 75%-90% old caravans which I mentioned in an earlier blog but we’ve noticed on the French side this is very unusual.   There are cabins instead of old caravans and lots are still being built.  There’s clearly a lot of money being invested or huge tax breaks, we don’t know which.   What the French don’t invest in are handbasins anywhere near the lavatories.   Hygiene doesn’t appear to be high on their agenda so I don’t know what happened during the earlier Covid days.  Did they just not have a ’wash your hands’ policy ?   Spanish sites were much more hygienic.

 

just about the best tap botch-up I've ever seen

This time we’re skirting around the north of Andorra and we achieve the title of this blog.  I had no idea but there’s an enclave of Spain called Llivia measuring about 13 square kilometres about one mile away from the Spanish border entirely surrounded by France.  No border, customs or flag waving as we entered.  We drove across it in 15 minutes.  No border, customs or flag waving as we left either.  What I just love about it is that the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees ceded all the villages in the area to the Kingdom of France.  Llivia was considered a town and not a village because of its role as the ancient capital of Cerdanya (!?) so it didn’t become French.  I presume this wasn’t even noticed when the first treaty was ratified or they wouldn't have needed a second one.  Then the anomaly was confirmed in the later 1660 Treaty of Llivia.  And there it still is.  Wonderful.

 

At this point we decided that we just had to get up into them thar hills to gain some relief from the heat.  It really wasn’t any fun at all at about 35C.  So we drove through the heat of the day with the air-con blasting away and ended up at Lourdes.  Yes, that Lourdes.  It just happened to be as far as we wanted to drive that day and it had a Carrefour supermarket, a chain which I’d put a little above Tesco and Sainsbury’s in quality but lower than Waitrose.  Apologies to non-Brits who won’t understand the reference.   It rained overnight but that just made the place hot and wet.   We had no intention of going into the town but for your information Lonely Planet describes it as a Catholic version of Las Vegas.  Our oldish L. Planet also lists the resident population as about 15,000 but says that Lourdes has the second largest number of hotel beds in France after Paris.  Now that is pretty miraculous. 

 

the castle at Foix.  what Corfe Castle will
look like when they finally get it finished

One major difficulty for us has been eating out because despite the French reputation for food, the concept of vegetarianism seems to have escaped them entirely.  I do eat meat and fish occasionally but the only thing that Heather will eat that has had eyes are potatoes.  The lack of imagination in the French restaurants we saw runs to a salad, which we can produce just as easily in our van.  There was one restaurant where I had a very good slice of dead cow and Heather ordered the curried vegetables.  Her meal came as a cold dish with no rice or accompaniments, a curried salad really.

 

I described the Spanish side of the Pyrenees earlier in these blogs where the range seems almost modestly reticent to show itself but the Pyrenees look very different from the French side.  On the Spanish side you know the mountains are there but you have to work to see them.  The French side is much more direct and obvious.  Bang.  There they are just rising to huge peaks in what seems like an impassable barrier for any attempt to get through them to Spain.  In reality of course we know there are passes strung along it.  Here in France, instead of gradually rising foothills in front of us, there’s a great sweep of snowy peaks ranged along the southern horizon which really makes for a spectacular view.

 

two photos at the Col de Peguere

covers 8 - 12 June 2022