Canillo

This morning we woken up at 6am, just before sunrise by a cockerel right outside Wanda’s window. I was laying in bed chuckling away because I thought it sounded quite French as he was missing his doodle in cock-a-doodle-doo so it sounded like cocker-doo instead. Then at 7am the was a crescendo of church bells that seemed to go on forever and then they continued to sound every 15 minutes. It was quite funny and luckily we’re early risers and had, had a good nights sleep apart from that.
By 8am we were pretty much packed up and ready to roll, Wanda was all secured, we emptied our grey waste and refilled the fresh water tank and at 8:30 we hit the road cutting across the bottom of France and heading into the Pyrenees.
Our target destination was the tunnel de Pyrenees heading from France into Andorra and it was only 18 miles away but it took nearly 2 hours driving up through the switch backs of the Pyrenees mountains, across a huge flat plateau of land on the top and then back down the other side. The Engine remap we had done before we left really helped Wanda get up the mountains and she performed beautifully pulling us up 7 - 10% gradients with relative ease. They were the tightest switch backs we had encountered and at one point while turning, the cupboard door flew open and all our tinned goods ended up on the floor. It gave us quite the fright.
After rearranging things, we pushed on towards the tunnel but unfortunately I had plotted the sat Nav wrong and we missed the tunnel and ended up driving over more of the Pyrenees mountains at an even steeper gradient. The views were magnificent as they always are along the mountain passes and we were greeted by griffin vultures soaring along at eye height as customs just waved us through a checkpoint without even looking up, as we finally entered Andorra.
This was our first time in Andorra and we didn’t know wether we would actually get here so we hadn’t done a lot of research except on the road, and our research had led us to believe we were going to struggle to find somewhere free or even cheap to spend the night.
I had found 2 viewpoints to try to get to that I had marked in the gps, and as we struggled to find somewhere to park along the main drag of a town called Canillo we decided to just head straight for one if those where there would be a car park.
We turned right off the main drag and immediately the road veered up to a 7% gradient and we were climbing the famous Col d’Ordino, featured in the Tour de France and La Vuelta.
Markers were dotted at every kilometre going up telling cyclists the gradient and at what kilometre they were at and the names of famous cyclists like Alberto Contador and Alejandro Valverde were etched into the floor. Wanda was once again driving in the footsteps of legends.
The switchbacks were incredible and so were the views and finally after 7 kilometres of driving at 7% we reached a gravel car park, where surprisingly there were very few other cars or campers.
Here, we parked up and took a small walk to one of our highlighted locations. A glass platform over hanging the edge of Col d’Ordino with a panoramic view. We paid our €5 euro each and off we went.
The views were incredible, and we were lucky to have caught it on a sunny day with no people but we realised we probably had that same view from the car park where Wanda was and we just paid €5 for the thrill of standing on a glass platform 2000 meters up.
We soon realised Andorra was going to be a problem because it’s not in the EU so we had no phone signal and no data. That wasn’t a problem until we realised we could only do things in Andorra if we booked them online which meant the worlds second longest suspension bridge had to be missed and we couldn’t pay to park anywhere.
We could have stayed out for the night in the car park at the top of the mountain but we thought it would probably be very cold and we had also told Ben he could contact us by text and as it cost nearly a £1 to text we realised that wasn’t feasible so we headed back down the mountain and plotted a course for Spain.
We hit the next Andorran town of Encamp just as schools were closing and the traffic was a complete nightmare, not to mention the speed cameras every 50 meters and the constantly changing speed limits. TomTom couldn’t keep up and was pinging and dinging constantly with warnings.
Finally after nearly an hour of being tense, we drove out of Encamp to a big digital smiling face saying thank you for visiting, we were waved through customs again this time they did check us for tobacco and alcohol, and then we were in Spain.
Our Third Country of the day.
It was now 4:30pm and within 2 miles of leaving Andorra we had Cell service and data again and we checked Park4night and found a free camp site with all facilities in a town called Organya, just 12 miles away.
We arrived at 5pm, there were several other motorhomers already there and there is also an overflow free parking area that Vanlifers seem to be attracted to. It’s funny how motorhomers and vanlifers don’t mix, although, we are 2 very different breeds.
This place has a large leisure facility nearby with showers, toilets and all sorts of sports and for €4:50 we can use the facilities. I decided to have a hot shower and use the toilets and on the way back to Wanda in the dark all the motorhomes had there TV’s on while the vanlifers vans had all exploded, with there belongings spread all around there vans and they were sat outside talking and shouting each other and generally being noisy.
We settled in for the night about 8pm.Read more