It’s been nearly a week since I last sat down to write my diary and the reason – too much relaxing and enjoying ourselves! And about time too. We’ve been having a much better time, slowing things down by trying to stay in each area longer, and making sure we have plenty of time for ourselves to relax and enjoy our travel. I think we might be getting the hang of this long-term travel thing, though I’m sure we’ve got a lot to work out yet!
In our campsite in Sorgeat in the French Pyrenees, I bought a walk guide (5 euros, bit tough on the budget!) to the local area. There were lots of good opportunities but we didn’t really have time to take advantage of them and ended up leaving it with the nice Dutch couple we met. While I can’t understand French, I can make my way through reading it, and found the local area bears a lot of similarity to traditional grazing and farming practices in Romania, including moving animals up and down the mountains with the seasons. We were only able to spend one day exploring some small towns. There are medieval farming terraces that have now been abandoned, which made for an interesting landscape. We completed a walk 
starting at a hilltop town up a tight and twisty road. Above the town was a ruined chateau, now converted into a bird of prey centre so we couldn’t explore it without paying. We walked on through forest to a babbling creek complete with ruins of a mill, then up to a smaller town and explored its church. Xander spent most of his time trying to work out how to convert it into a house, a dream of ours. We decided to head back to camp after that, as some nasty clouds had built up and we wanted to avoid yet another storm, but drove a bit further up the valley just to have a look. It was worth it, as the mountain landscape here was stunning. We drove up another windy road to have a look around, almost falling over when the road suddenly ended and Xander took an emergency turn into someone’s driveway! As we drove back through Ax-le-Thermes to the campsite, I saw hundreds of swifts flying over town. I love these birds, they have amazing screaming calls as they speed through the air and cut corners around buildings. I have loved hearing them appear for the first time each summer in the UK because it meant summer was on its way, and something about their screaming call lifts my heart. I’m going to miss them.
The next day, we drove through Andorra, the mountain country that is basically one giant ski resort and shopping village. To be honest, it wasn’t really worth it. The road up from the French side was pretty nice, and I finally got to see cows with bells around their necks in France (saw in Switzerland, kept hearing them near campsite, still couldn’t get a photo!!). However, the rest of the place was just hotels and shops, one town after another. Andorra supposedly has low or no sales tax. We were looking for a few bits of camping equipment, including new folding water bags as our old ones have started splitting. From our looking around though, p
rices are much the same or even more expensive than usual! Seems a farce really, just like airport duty free. The storm from the night before (yes, it rained again!) was still lingering, and made Andorra cold and wet. We decided not to stay as we thought it would just make for a miserable night. We therefore had to break our rule of only getting stickers for countries we’ve spent a night in, and bought an Andorra sticker for the luggage :-) On the way out, we had to pass through border customs control, but while they were pulling over cars they didn’t care about the bike. Maybe they could tell we were crammed to the hilt and didn’t have room for loads of duty free alcohol and cigarettes!!
Now we’re in the Spanish Pyrenees, and are exploring an entirely different type of mountain landscape. After we left Andorra, the weather quickly changed from cold and overcast with rain threatening, to hot with clear skies, a more desert-looking landscape and towns are few and far between. What a difference! The area has been absolutely wonderful, with great views and good camp spots, an excellent day’s walking, and lots of relaxing and drinks - unusual for us, as we rarely drink but treats are needed sometimes!
We first headed for a town called Sort for only one reason – a scrap of information we had on the Spanish Pyrenees mentioned some bikers camped here. Seeing as we had no idea how easy it would be to find campgrounds in Spain, this was as good a reason as any!! When we first stopped for a break outside Andorra at a conveniently located tourist office, I picked up an area map and found that Sort is right near a national park so worth basing at. Our campsite was outside town in Montardit de Baix. It was not a great campground, very busy with caravanners and families, a bar-restaurant, swimming pool and lots of noise. However, the tents were located near a river that we didn’t know existed when we arrived and we got a great spot looking straight over it. This gave us a noise buffer, pretty scenery, plus a great night show of bats feeding over the river! We had a strong feeling of paranoia at the site and made extra sure everything was secure when we left camp. We had no problems, just concerns, at least in part because early on first night, Xander scared off some kids acting suspicious near our tent. Right next to our tent was a curiously shaped tree that appeared to be both male and female on opposite sides, and looked like a person diving into the ground. It was oozing a gooey sap and was covered in insects all the time, including on the first night when we witnessed the bizarre act of hermaphroditic slug sex! I’d heard about this but never seen it – the two slugs dangle from a line of goo while simultaneously fertilising and being fertilised, slowly spinning in the air. Had we somehow found some sort of mystical fertility tree?!?!
Sort turned out to be a well-supplied rafting/kayaking tourist town, which meant it made a good base. We took an easy first day, travelling up to Espot at the national park’s entrance so we could find out what to do in the park and how to go about things. The park is much like an Australian national park, with no people living in it and little vehicle access outside the main car parks. They run a fleet of 4x4 taxis to get into park without walking the whole way or if the main car park had filled (which happens reasonably early in the day). The taxi service was very expensive, but I can see it’s worth it for many people; however, I have to wonder how much damage are they doing running that many vehicles that frequently??? I mean, it was A LOT. We decided to set off early the next day to ensure parking to walk the main route into one of the lakes. Back in Sort that afternoon, we found a bar that provided free wi-fi access, catching up on some emails and banking but no blogging as we had nothing ready from our recent laziness. We were tired early and decided we needed a break from self-catering, so had our first restaurant meal – mass-produced paella and yummy frozen drinks that cost nearly a day’s budget!
We had a gorgeous walk the next day, with clear blue skies the whole time. The area is full of rivers, waterfalls, huge mountains and stunning views, and we walked to several lakes and a waterfall, before completing a circuit that took us high in the mountains to a viewpoint at 2190m, looking over to mountains around 2800m high. There was even still a mini-glacier on one mountain! We spent 7.5 hours walking a route that was technically only 5.5 hours long and loved it. It’s been a long time since either of us has done any 
mountain hiking, and I particularly go a bit crazy if I don’t get a mountain fix every now and then! From the list of wildlife noted for the area, Xander managed to see a stoat and a snake (hopefully an asp), but we didn’t find a desman, a strange platypus-like rat-sized mammal that features in the Life of Mammals series and I really wanted to see – not exactly surprising though as it’s 
probably nocturnal. There were loads of bugs and butterflies, but practically no birds within the park itself except a couple of birds of prey. Lots of plants were in 
flower, including really cool purple thistles and mountain lilies. While it is hot, summer is definitely a time worth visiting for the flowers and daytime weather. We were very tired but happy that night, and treated ourselves to beers that almost knocked us out!
After 3 nights, we moved along the Spanish Pyrenees to a campsite in Torla, again coming here only because another bike traveller had noted it. We have had our fix of mountain walking, so we’ve just been relaxing here, visiting the very pretty old town and chilling in camp, The town is set under some gorgeous mountains, and it has been nice to just stare at them. Last night, we treated ourselves to a massive bottle of cold sangria, our favourite alcoholic drink, and I finally beat Xander at chess! I shall have to use
this tactic more often ;-) We found free internet at the tourism office, plus one of the very few tourist attraction brochures that Spain seems to provide, and discovered a nearby area is known for its prehistoric cave art, something of an interest of mine. We used the net to quickly find out more and decided to cut our stay short by a day to try and see some of the art. As the office also supplied wi-fi, we planned to come back this afternoon after getting some things ready on the computer and having a swim in the nearby river (turned out it wasn’t suitable for swimming). We’ve been using bathroom power supplies wherever possible, as many other people do even if there are signs saying not to or, in the case of this campground, they will charge in reception for a fee. Spanish campgrounds seem to be well-supplied with lots of power-points, and there’s always girls/women blow-drying their hair so I guess that’s why! As we needed to charge our camera batteries, the computer was running low on batteries again by the time we had downloaded our cameras from the last few days of spectacular photography opportunities. We really have to work out how we are going to use our bike-battery-powered chargers, as this is becoming a problem!! We had dinner but were feeling tired and lazy and not wanting to walk back to use the internet, and then the rain started AGAIN. We are getting very sick of rain! There have been some amazing thunderstorms across the Pyrenees, and the landscape has been absolutely worth it, but we’re thinking it’s time to get away from the mountains now.
One of my camera memory cards had a hissy fit in France and started corrupting files and overwriting photos. Hopefully I’ve managed to save everything already as I was definitely losing some Switzerland photos but may also have lost some good France pics. Oh well! Xander thinks he may be able to get the pictures back but we 
need time and lots of power to do it…not good in a campsite! Unfortunately that means I now have one less memory card to use. I’ve been taking some photos of the strange chimneys that are apparently a Pyrenees ‘thing’, but don’t think I will capture the full range of varieties!
I also forgot to note in an earlier blog entry that we saw flamingos!! As we travelled along the coastline from Montpellier into the French Pyrenees, we passed a coastal lagoon with about 100 birds in it. While these weren’t the classic pink bird, at least they were still flamingos! I didn’t except to see them for some time yet.
In our campsite in Sorgeat in the French Pyrenees, I bought a walk guide (5 euros, bit tough on the budget!) to the local area. There were lots of good opportunities but we didn’t really have time to take advantage of them and ended up leaving it with the nice Dutch couple we met. While I can’t understand French, I can make my way through reading it, and found the local area bears a lot of similarity to traditional grazing and farming practices in Romania, including moving animals up and down the mountains with the seasons. We were only able to spend one day exploring some small towns. There are medieval farming terraces that have now been abandoned, which made for an interesting landscape. We completed a walk 
starting at a hilltop town up a tight and twisty road. Above the town was a ruined chateau, now converted into a bird of prey centre so we couldn’t explore it without paying. We walked on through forest to a babbling creek complete with ruins of a mill, then up to a smaller town and explored its church. Xander spent most of his time trying to work out how to convert it into a house, a dream of ours. We decided to head back to camp after that, as some nasty clouds had built up and we wanted to avoid yet another storm, but drove a bit further up the valley just to have a look. It was worth it, as the mountain landscape here was stunning. We drove up another windy road to have a look around, almost falling over when the road suddenly ended and Xander took an emergency turn into someone’s driveway! As we drove back through Ax-le-Thermes to the campsite, I saw hundreds of swifts flying over town. I love these birds, they have amazing screaming calls as they speed through the air and cut corners around buildings. I have loved hearing them appear for the first time each summer in the UK because it meant summer was on its way, and something about their screaming call lifts my heart. I’m going to miss them.The next day, we drove through Andorra, the mountain country that is basically one giant ski resort and shopping village. To be honest, it wasn’t really worth it. The road up from the French side was pretty nice, and I finally got to see cows with bells around their necks in France (saw in Switzerland, kept hearing them near campsite, still couldn’t get a photo!!). However, the rest of the place was just hotels and shops, one town after another. Andorra supposedly has low or no sales tax. We were looking for a few bits of camping equipment, including new folding water bags as our old ones have started splitting. From our looking around though, p
rices are much the same or even more expensive than usual! Seems a farce really, just like airport duty free. The storm from the night before (yes, it rained again!) was still lingering, and made Andorra cold and wet. We decided not to stay as we thought it would just make for a miserable night. We therefore had to break our rule of only getting stickers for countries we’ve spent a night in, and bought an Andorra sticker for the luggage :-) On the way out, we had to pass through border customs control, but while they were pulling over cars they didn’t care about the bike. Maybe they could tell we were crammed to the hilt and didn’t have room for loads of duty free alcohol and cigarettes!!Now we’re in the Spanish Pyrenees, and are exploring an entirely different type of mountain landscape. After we left Andorra, the weather quickly changed from cold and overcast with rain threatening, to hot with clear skies, a more desert-looking landscape and towns are few and far between. What a difference! The area has been absolutely wonderful, with great views and good camp spots, an excellent day’s walking, and lots of relaxing and drinks - unusual for us, as we rarely drink but treats are needed sometimes!We first headed for a town called Sort for only one reason – a scrap of information we had on the Spanish Pyrenees mentioned some bikers camped here. Seeing as we had no idea how easy it would be to find campgrounds in Spain, this was as good a reason as any!! When we first stopped for a break outside Andorra at a conveniently located tourist office, I picked up an area map and found that Sort is right near a national park so worth basing at. Our campsite was outside town in Montardit de Baix. It was not a great campground, very busy with caravanners and families, a bar-restaurant, swimming pool and lots of noise. However, the tents were located near a river that we didn’t know existed when we arrived and we got a great spot looking straight over it. This gave us a noise buffer, pretty scenery, plus a great night show of bats feeding over the river! We had a strong feeling of paranoia at the site and made extra sure everything was secure when we left camp. We had no problems, just concerns, at least in part because early on first night, Xander scared off some kids acting suspicious near our tent. Right next to our tent was a curiously shaped tree that appeared to be both male and female on opposite sides, and looked like a person diving into the ground. It was oozing a gooey sap and was covered in insects all the time, including on the first night when we witnessed the bizarre act of hermaphroditic slug sex! I’d heard about this but never seen it – the two slugs dangle from a line of goo while simultaneously fertilising and being fertilised, slowly spinning in the air. Had we somehow found some sort of mystical fertility tree?!?!
Sort turned out to be a well-supplied rafting/kayaking tourist town, which meant it made a good base. We took an easy first day, travelling up to Espot at the national park’s entrance so we could find out what to do in the park and how to go about things. The park is much like an Australian national park, with no people living in it and little vehicle access outside the main car parks. They run a fleet of 4x4 taxis to get into park without walking the whole way or if the main car park had filled (which happens reasonably early in the day). The taxi service was very expensive, but I can see it’s worth it for many people; however, I have to wonder how much damage are they doing running that many vehicles that frequently??? I mean, it was A LOT. We decided to set off early the next day to ensure parking to walk the main route into one of the lakes. Back in Sort that afternoon, we found a bar that provided free wi-fi access, catching up on some emails and banking but no blogging as we had nothing ready from our recent laziness. We were tired early and decided we needed a break from self-catering, so had our first restaurant meal – mass-produced paella and yummy frozen drinks that cost nearly a day’s budget!
We had a gorgeous walk the next day, with clear blue skies the whole time. The area is full of rivers, waterfalls, huge mountains and stunning views, and we walked to several lakes and a waterfall, before completing a circuit that took us high in the mountains to a viewpoint at 2190m, looking over to mountains around 2800m high. There was even still a mini-glacier on one mountain! We spent 7.5 hours walking a route that was technically only 5.5 hours long and loved it. It’s been a long time since either of us has done any 
mountain hiking, and I particularly go a bit crazy if I don’t get a mountain fix every now and then! From the list of wildlife noted for the area, Xander managed to see a stoat and a snake (hopefully an asp), but we didn’t find a desman, a strange platypus-like rat-sized mammal that features in the Life of Mammals series and I really wanted to see – not exactly surprising though as it’s 
probably nocturnal. There were loads of bugs and butterflies, but practically no birds within the park itself except a couple of birds of prey. Lots of plants were in 
flower, including really cool purple thistles and mountain lilies. While it is hot, summer is definitely a time worth visiting for the flowers and daytime weather. We were very tired but happy that night, and treated ourselves to beers that almost knocked us out!
After 3 nights, we moved along the Spanish Pyrenees to a campsite in Torla, again coming here only because another bike traveller had noted it. We have had our fix of mountain walking, so we’ve just been relaxing here, visiting the very pretty old town and chilling in camp, The town is set under some gorgeous mountains, and it has been nice to just stare at them. Last night, we treated ourselves to a massive bottle of cold sangria, our favourite alcoholic drink, and I finally beat Xander at chess! I shall have to use
this tactic more often ;-) We found free internet at the tourism office, plus one of the very few tourist attraction brochures that Spain seems to provide, and discovered a nearby area is known for its prehistoric cave art, something of an interest of mine. We used the net to quickly find out more and decided to cut our stay short by a day to try and see some of the art. As the office also supplied wi-fi, we planned to come back this afternoon after getting some things ready on the computer and having a swim in the nearby river (turned out it wasn’t suitable for swimming). We’ve been using bathroom power supplies wherever possible, as many other people do even if there are signs saying not to or, in the case of this campground, they will charge in reception for a fee. Spanish campgrounds seem to be well-supplied with lots of power-points, and there’s always girls/women blow-drying their hair so I guess that’s why! As we needed to charge our camera batteries, the computer was running low on batteries again by the time we had downloaded our cameras from the last few days of spectacular photography opportunities. We really have to work out how we are going to use our bike-battery-powered chargers, as this is becoming a problem!! We had dinner but were feeling tired and lazy and not wanting to walk back to use the internet, and then the rain started AGAIN. We are getting very sick of rain! There have been some amazing thunderstorms across the Pyrenees, and the landscape has been absolutely worth it, but we’re thinking it’s time to get away from the mountains now.
One of my camera memory cards had a hissy fit in France and started corrupting files and overwriting photos. Hopefully I’ve managed to save everything already as I was definitely losing some Switzerland photos but may also have lost some good France pics. Oh well! Xander thinks he may be able to get the pictures back but we 
need time and lots of power to do it…not good in a campsite! Unfortunately that means I now have one less memory card to use. I’ve been taking some photos of the strange chimneys that are apparently a Pyrenees ‘thing’, but don’t think I will capture the full range of varieties!I also forgot to note in an earlier blog entry that we saw flamingos!! As we travelled along the coastline from Montpellier into the French Pyrenees, we passed a coastal lagoon with about 100 birds in it. While these weren’t the classic pink bird, at least they were still flamingos! I didn’t except to see them for some time yet.