I wake up before the alarm at seven, so I grab my tablet and browse for new books, it’s a weekly struggle, even though I always read at least one old book before I buy a new one.. I decide to read an old favourite again: The Hob’s Bargain by Patricia Briggs. We have breakfast at eight, it’s always a joy to have French baguette again, I just add some butter, ham and comté cheese and am reminded of my youth in France in the nineties.
I take the first shift as a chauffeur when we leave around nine thirty; the weather is sunny, temp is about 12° C and traffic, as expected on a Sunday morning, light but a bit slow. We pass delicious sounding places like Cognac, Bordeaux, Jurançon and Béarn (like the sauce) but ignore all temptation to visit: we stick to the toll roads where possible, because we have about 800 km to do.
We decided yesterday to take the short but slow way, crossing the Pyrenees mountains between Pau and Zaragoza. Both Google Maps and the somewhat outdated car GPS have various proposals on which mountain pass to take, but we firmly stick to the route advised by the road signs, assuming these same signs would also tell us if the pass or tunnel were closed.
We enjoy great mountain views all the way from Pau, even see some snow on the higher peaks. It’s a good road, though narrow enough occasionally that I’m happy there are no trucks driving on Sundays. We cross the border in the 8,6 km long Somport tunnel, in total it takes us 110 km and 2 hours to get through the mountain range. It’s narrow but stretches from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, the highest peaks more eastward than where we’re crossing.
On the Spanish side it’s more arid and rocky and we remain on a high plateau for a while. We stop at a highway picnic area to admire the mountains and to observe the vultures, they’re huge birds which are slowly – with the help of breeding programmes – repopulating the Pyrenees.
The last few kilometres to our hotel are extremely curvy, we’re dropping down into a green valley with lakes and waterfalls, which we’ll visit tomorrow. Dinner is planned at 20.45 (15 minutes after they open), we were totally prepared for this and had a late lunch, so we’re not too hungry. I do the picture sorting and writing first, easily done on such a day, eventful only in the great views from the car.
Febe writes 