PYRENEES ADVENTURE 2012 (Part 2)

Sunday 1 July 2012

 Road trip

Past midnight we arrived in Calais at the border town of France. From here our 15 hour road journey began. There is more than one way to get you across France and we decided to take the shortest route, the toll route. It means long stretch of motorway all the way down until the Spanish border. However, all users must pay the toll charge, which vary from route to route. It's not cheap, all in all it came to around 80 euros one way. But driving here save you a lot of time and the roads are superb! Another great thing is, that at about every 10km you will find a small rest stop and at every 40km services. The only down thing is, that if you have a left hand drive car, you will have to get out at each toll charge station and run around your car to get the ticket from the machine, and also to pay. Be prepared to get horned at, if you don't get your arse around fast enough!!! It's fun!!!

French toll charge point

Toll charge ticket machine

We've hit Paris at around 5.00am, so there was not much traffic yet, luckily! Even though the route takes you through Paris, it only takes you on its outskirt. You get a view of the suburb mostly covered in graffiti. Early morning drivers here are real maniacs, and if you have a foreign plated car, get ready to be waved, horned and yelled at, in a good way, of course! We had number of drivers waveing at us and one crazy group of transvestites in a Golf GTI, that were hanging out of windows yelling and sending kisses.They all wore pink bikini tops, with boobs the size of melons...what a piss! Shame, I haven't managed to take a picture of it!

When you travel with your dog it's good to take as many breaks as you can! Especially on a hot summer day! We rested almost after every 40km for minimum 15minutes on average. Nero got his short walkies, time to empty and fresh cold water refreshment. I packed a smaller cooling box with few bottles, so that water always remains nice and chilled.  At one of the services there was a kind of shower fountain. The difference was, that the water pressure did not come from the ground up, but from the sides. I thought about letting Nero in to cool himself off, but once he saw it, he was in it. It was really amusing watching him to just sit in there and getting soaked. Some people laughted at him, others came over and took pictures. That's the beauty of traveling with a dog! They just make your day,  don't they! Even though they often make fool of themselfs, or you...

Midday shower

Cooling off his balls ...feeling good

Almost an hour before arriving at the Spanish border, we entered the region of French Midi- Pyrenees. The road remained straight, just the views have changed. Slowly, you started to see a low mountain peaks in a far distance, forest were getting thicker and mainly dominated by all sorts of pine trees. As you drove further towards them, they began closing in around you from the sides with peaks rising higher up into the sky in front. Very soon we arrived at the French-Spanish border line.
 Road became smaller and we moved into the heart of the mountain valleys. Swallowed by untouched nature, the air slowly filled with strong odour of pine resin, and all you could hear was relaxing sound of running water in the mountain rivers, flowing through local villages. The road consisted of many tunnels, some long, some short carved straight through the mountains. The sun got hotter and temperature rised to almost 40 degree Celsius. Too hot for some if you're not used to it, and you won't be if you're coming from England! Even the car struggled.

French Midi-Pyrenees

Almost at the Spanish border

Spanish mountain tunnels

Spanish Pyrenees villages and blue sky

Customs no longer in use

From the border to our final destination in Catalania took us nearly three hours of drive. Roads were fantastic, the spanish have spent time and money to built them. Main roads slowly faded into smaller and more narrow roads. Some continue to run through local towns located in the valleys, and others climbing steeply uphill on mountain landscape with many sharp serpentine turns leading you up to small villages. One of them was Figols de Tremp, a small village built at the altitude of 1000m with few houses growing out straight from the mountain rock. For the next 8 days this was gonna be our home!

 P.S. Almost forgot to mention that every time I was falling asleep, Nero would start to whistle on the squeeky rubber chicken!!! Great way to keep you awake! Next time you travel with your dog, don't forget to equip him with rubber chicken! Stops him from chewing your boot and keep you awake!!!!

To be continued....