Ax Les Thermes

St. Louis to Ax-Les Thermes: July 21.

We slept well in our cupboard, and were up and about at the respectable holiday hour of 9.00am. Breakfast in the village – the usual fresh baguette, croissants, deux grande café noir and deux chocalat sho.

Today, a drive through the Pyrenees Orientals on the Spanish side, into Andorra and out again back into France.

The Spanish border crossing was quite uneventful – like Switzerland we barely realised that we had. The Spanish architecture is very different to France. A lot of river stone and wooden houses.

The drive to Andorra took about 2 hours, and then we hit a border delay. Andorra is one of these strange little tax free havens that seem to dot Europe. The police were searching a lot of the vehicles going in – not sure why, but we were glad they did not search ours as we have accumulated a lot of stuff and the Renault is chockers!

Andorra seems to consist of a series of duty free shopping centres. We stopped in the “capital” city – La Vella. Brian was looking for new Raybans and this looked like a good place to find them. It took awhile, but eventually he made a decision – who said women can’t make up their minds! I got a new pair of glasses! All you smokers out there – read this and weep – a carton of smokes was Euro10.00 (about AUD16.00) A lot of people smoke in Andorra!

Andorra is also up in the Pyrenees and La Vella nestles in a steep valley. We went into a café for lunch, just as their was a huge clap of thunder and it began to rain – a torrential downpour!!!. Soon water was streaming down the cliffs and the narrow streets were awash. It lasted about 15 minutes and within half an hour the street was dry again. Petrol is also cheap, so we filled the car with gazole, bought some beer – also cheap, and waited to cross back into France. This was also quite a delay. Once again we did not get searched.

As we began our descent into the valley floor and towards the small town of St. Girons, were we had pre-booked accommodation – ripper no more searching for a hotel room for the night. Our discussion turned to the Tour de France, and the next days’ stage we were going to watch. I said that the stage would start in Foix and we could watch it depart, then drive a different route to see one of the climbs. Brian made the comment that the stage on the 21st did not start from Foix – alarm bells began to ring! If the stage did not start from Foix, we were not booked into St. Girons tonight. A quick search of the itinerary I had done revealed that we had made a small mistake. The night of the 21st was supposed to be spent in Spain. Bugger – I had though as we drove through the Pyrenees that it would have been good to spend a night - Gerona has been a place of interest for awhile as quite a few professional cyclists live there – including my favourite Lance Armstrong at one stage. But too late now. Where would we spend the night? The Tour came through this area the next day and I knew that accommodation was very scarce. The first major town we came to was Ax Les Thermes – no luck here. Pretty place but due to the Tour De France finishing on one of the nearby mountain tops everything was ‘Compleat”

We even tried the camping ground – desperate times call for desperate measures! No luck – minimum stay in a cabin was one week. We drove out of town, and saw a hotel sign for 2kms over the river and up a side road. The proprietor spoke no English at all, but after some sign language and a little help from a man sitting nearby we secured 2 rooms for the price of one – and I also helped a couple from Invercargill in NZ get a room. They too had been searching for some time.