Snow Andorrable
Following a few days wandering the salubrious streets of several Andorran towns and villages, we dusted off our salopettes and went in search of some snow-capped peaks. Fortunately, in this diminutive nation, one doesn’t need to look too far to find a whole range of them. As well as being renowned for duty-free shopping and as a European tax haven (no wealth, gift, inheritance, or capital gains tax in play here), Andorra also has a number of well-respected ski resorts – nine to be exact. We set our sat nav to the closest one and began our hairpin-laden journey to its zenith – hoping our van enjoyed the fresh mountain air as much as we did.
For those not avid watchers of cycling’s Vuelta a España, Cortals d’Encamp is a favourite summit finish in the sport’s second most famous Grand Tour and, for today only, Vishnu the van. It glided around the frigid bends and gobbled up the growing gradient until the air became noticeably scarcer of oxygen and our an-adjusted brains began to throb. This was the highest we had, or would, endeavour on our trip and it felt a world away from the balmy beaches of the southern Portuguese coastline. We eventually reached a small car park next to the funitel cableway which connects the top of the mountain to the town of Encamp some seven hundred metres below and pulled into a space next to an abandoned ariel tram.
As our original plan involved teaching several lessons from our new lofty position, as well as watching the next episode of Educating Andorra, we required a strong and stable internet connection. Not unsurprisingly atop a ski resort in the middle of the Pyrenees, this quickly became a pipedream. Instead, we were forced to hasten our retreat – but not without taking copious photographic evidence of Vishnu’s first successful mountain summit. Which turned out not to be its last… of that day.
A mere two hours later and we were ascending once more, this time climbing the principal tarmacked artery connecting Spain to Andorra, at one end, and Andorra to France at the other – otherwise known as Highway CG-2. Despite being the nation’s main road, it snakes and winds its way over, around, and – occasionally – through some of the region’s most striking mountains. In an area where snow gritters are more valuable than surgeons, it was no surprise when the heavens opened and began unleashing their impenetrable flurries upon our increasingly snow-bit vehicle. We scurried towards the small town of El Pas de la Casa, directly on the French border, parked along a side road, and battened down the hatches…
An unrelenting blizzard ensued, one which immediately buried the windscreen and blanketed the road as far as the eye could see – which wasn’t all that far. A glance at the forecast didn’t provide much encouragement as the next ten days appeared whiter than a Tory Party spring conference. Fearing spending the rest of our lives gritting the roads of El Pas de la Casa, we made a rather drastic decision: to continue driving. With darkness already having descended and the snowstorm indefatigable, we set about shovelling a path clear before gently re-joining the near-abandoned highway.
What should have been a three-minute drive to the French border took almost thirty, mainly due to our pausing and gasping at every abandoned car, almost all entirely hidden by previous monstrous snowdrifts. The wildly moustachioed border guards looked on in bemusement – although they waved us promptly through – as if saluting our bravery (or possibly acknowledging our stupidity). Despite reaching the sanctuary of France, the road ahead remained all downhill, all on our lonesome, and all slipperier than a perspiring salmon. We gradually descended the Perilous Pyrenees to the sound of almost continual blizzard warning alarms on all of our electronic devices until, eventually, the threat of being buried under an avalanche subsided enough for us to be able to pull over and contemplate our life choices. Andorra, maybe we’ll return in August, next time.
J
