France, Andorra and Spain.
July 19th, 2009
I’ve just spent 11 days on holiday with Kirsten and Remco, touring around Spain and (mostly) France, staying at cheap-ass motels, couch-surfing hosts, family-parks, and some of Kirsten’s friends. We climbed the Tourmalet, I damaged my car, Kirsten and I rode a horse for the first time, we visited Mont-Saint-Michel and Omaha beach, and we drove through Andorra the day before the Tour de France would visit. We also saw two legs of the Tour de France.
We drove to Barcelona in two legs, with an overnight stop at Bezier (our intention was Montpellier, but as the Tour finished there that day no hotel rooms were available). Kirsten had arranged for us to stay at Ignasi, a couch-surfing host who kindly let us sleep in his apartment.
Remco and I saw the Tour from a corner near Barcelona’s zoo, after spending a very rainy day on the streets. Kirsten was invited by the NOS to watch the finish.
The next day I damaged my car while trying to get out of the underground garage underneath Ignasi’s apartment. Apparently, a Peugeot 307 SW does not have enough traction to pull itself up on one wheel on a 30 degrees slope. It did glide back easily though, straight into the wall. Oh well. Only minor damage was done.
As we drove to our next destination, camping Durfort in France, we decided to drive through Andorra as none of us had ever been there. But it isn’t much of a country; Andorra is basically some mountains, two roads, and a bunch of villages along those roads. The detour into this country added two hours of driving to our day, though. We stopped in Andorra to stand on its soil, for what is in all likelihood the only chance we’ll ever have to do so.
We spent two nights in Durfort, taking in mostly sunshine and doing nothing. This was actually the only day we made our own meal! We left very early on the sixth day of our trip to drive to the Tourmalet, where the Tour would pass later that day. At 13 km into the climb to the top (after 4.5 hours of continuous walking) I had to stop because I was too hot from the sun, too hungry, too thirsty, and too starving for oxygen. Kirsten and Remco went on to the summit of the road. When they returned we waited on the terrace of a small bar for the Tour, and watched it pass us by. On our way down (another 3 hours!) we passed Van Hummel, a Dutch cyclist who had an expression on his face that said, “You really want me to climb this mountain?” and also, “I can’t believe I get away with being pushed.”.
After walking a total of 28 km for me and 36 for Kirsten and Remco, we got into the car and drove for about 2 hours to friends of Kirsten, where we would spent another two days. They own some land in France, and had set up three tents for us to sleep in. Their lands also contain a small lake with a beach, where I spent some hours cooling down. Kirsten and I got onto a horse for the first time in our lives the next day, and it was fun! Obviously we managed to turn right and left only by the grace of those horses, but I now understand much better why sitting on a horse may make you feel like a king. They offer holidays, by the way: http://www.vakantiehuismetpaardeninfrankrijk.nl/
We left this place on the eighth day of our trip. Before we set out we decided to visit Mont-Saint-Michel just South of Normandy. As it turned out, my grasp of French geography is completely wrong: I thought it’d be a 3 hour drive, but it was more like 7! France is a lot bigger than I thought, and apparently Paris is not in the middle.
Anyway, after a long drive the sight of Mont-Saint-Michel in the distance is phenomenal! We visited the place during the evening, we had dinner there, walked around the island, and found a very cheap motel just around the corner where we spent an entire evening watching CNN.
Sight of Mont-Saint-Michel.
The next day we visited Omaha beach. There’s an American Cemetery and Memorial Centre at Omaha beach’s head, with a small exposition on D-day. We also visited another D-day museum a little further away, with more photographs taken in those dramatic hours after the first landings.
We were meant to arrive at Tom and Barbara the next day, and as it would have been a 6 hour drive we decided to drive at least halfway there. We found a hotel and a place to eat near the highway at Nemours, about 60 km South of Paris. We left the next day with only 2 hours to go, and so we had a leisurely brunch followed by a walk in Montargis.
Tom and Barbara are the nicest people we’ve met. They arranged a barbecue for us, showed us around their lands and were generally a joy to talk with. During the final hours of the evening a storm broke loose over the area, but not until we were finished with the barbecue. Remco and I slept in the attic, surrounded by bats and howling winds.
The next and final day we set off for home, dropping Kirsten off at Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport and arriving at home around 9pm. Tired, but glad to have met both Kirsten and Remco on this adventure.
This is a link to my Flickr page, where you will find the Autovakantie 2009 set with pictures of our road-trip. These are the best two pictures I’ve taken:
An outpost of Mont-Saint-Michel, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
The sun in a hayfield near Durfort.
My name is Marco Hokke. My blog is about the things that interest me and things I might forget if I would not blog them.
One Response to “France, Andorra and Spain.”
1Ignasi
July 22nd, 2009 @ 7:25 am
Very nice pictures, very nice writing
I have god time with you
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