Skip to main content

Andorra!

The summer of 2017 saw us heading back to Valras-Plage in Southern France with the same group of friends from 2015. Once again, we planned to hire a motorbike from Road2Luxe, but this time we had a new plan. Rather than exploring the Alps, something we had done a couple of times now, we decided we would head in the opposite direction and check out the Pyrenees mountains, ending in Andorra. A new plan also meant a different bike, so this trip saw us riding the BMW RS1200.



Our first full day on the bike saw us heading straight out towards the Pyrenees. We always stop a lot along the way to try and capture lots of photos of the stunning sights we see. Touching on the Spanish border through our journey we were heading towards Andorra where we had booked to spend the night in Hotel Nordic. This hotel is ideally located for skiers in the winter season, not too far at all from the slopes, I can imagine it would be absolute stunning when surrounded by snow. But it was summer for us, so was it still as stunning? The answer to this question is 100% yes. What I hadn't realised when he suggested we book this hotel was the reason he really wanted to stay here. That reason was all the vintage cars and motorbikes that they have in their reception. I wasn't complaining though; we had a beautiful view of the mountains from our room, a lovely warm and large room with fab toiletries in the bathroom, and a brilliant bar and restaurant. What more could we ask for!



After out little stay away in Andorra, we went on a mini excursion back from the campsite in Valras-Plage to some interesting places. One of which included us finding the Chรขteau des Baux. This 10th century castle was torn down in 1633 by Louis XIII but had been home to some of the most famous minstrels and troubadours of the day. There was very little shade throughout the castle, which did make this a slightly harder exploration, but we survived!



All in all it was a stunning trip to the South of France, and I have no doubt we'll be back to explore even more of the region!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jungfraujoch

Having spent the night on top of the world, we had planned to go even higher up and head to the top of Europe - Jungfraujoch! It's also known as the highest train station in Europe sitting at a pretty cool 3454m above sea level. We knew we had plenty of time for this section of the adventure, as our next stop was only about a 2 hour drive away (a short distance in comparison to some of the drives we had done so far) so once we got back down from our hotel, we had a short walk across to the train station to get the train on up. We had pre-booked this trip through Swiss Travel Centre, as we had also bought a Half Fare Railcard each - at £89 each, they're not cheap, but the savings you get from these railcards quickly adds up as they do what they say on the tin and give you 50% discount on the trains, boats, buses and some cable cars. For the 2 excursions we knew we had planned, we had effectively made our money back on the ticket costs, and then there were added bonuses like ou...
Post a Comment
Read more

The First Trip

Summer of  2014 rolls round and we want to get away. We don't care where exactly, we just want to get out of the country. Money is a bit tight, so we decide to camp. We plan a rough route in the space of a few days, and are ready to leaving within 5 days of deciding we want to go. Loading up my Honda Civic with the camping essential (and various replacement parts for the car, just in case), we hit the road and go down to Dover. I hadn't camped before, so made one condition beforehand which was that we would have one night in a hotel in the middle. 2 days before we left, he also realised that we're going the weekend of Le Mans 24 hour race, so in retaliation to my "one night in a hotel", we agree that we also stop by the race on the way. On the way there it dawns on him that England are playing in the World Cup on the night we arrive, so it becomes a race to get to Le Mans to find a pub to watch the game in. We do it, but only by the skin of the teeth. On my...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Land of Fire and Ice

A little later than planned, I'm finally writing about our trip to Iceland that happened in January. For my birthday in December, the lovely Mr Hill booked for us to go to Iceland. We arranged to go away in January to get Christmas and the likes out of the way. Mid-January rolled round and saw us leaving at 3am to drive to the airport to fly to Iceland. It was pretty chilly, but nothing like what we knew to expect once we reached Iceland. A short 3 hour flight saw us landing in Reykjavik's international airport, Keflavik. After we cleared through security we went to pick up our hire car which was going to be our main mode of transport for the 4 days we had to explore the country. It was a bit of a surprise to find ourselves with a Hyundai i10 as our mode of transport, but we quickly learned that it didn't matter what make and model the car was, as long as it had snow tyres on, this was all that mattered in the icy and snowy environment! We had a short 20 minute dr...
Post a Comment
Read more