No photos from this leg of the journey except for this silly one Coraleen took from the Passenger seat!! but it definitely deserves a mention. After leaving St Emilion in beautiful sunshine we drove south west towards Spain (dreading the border without a passport) and right into torrential rain, low mist and long long steep grades which seem to go on forever. The Spanish have done amazing things through the South West Pyranees to make the journey (slightly) more comfortable. Tunnel after tunnel after tunnel.. many of them over a kilometer long and of course with this type of infrastructure comes the TOLLS! We paid Euro31 (for those of you unfamiliar with the exchange rate this is NZ$62!!) on one particular stretch with several further on at a much lesser charge. I couldn´t imagine driving this route without them as the low mist meant headlights were a necessity. Actually Spanish law dictates headlights must be on in all tunnels (god knows why cause the tunnels are so brightly lit you could wear sunglasses) but its the high points of the Pyranees where you can´t see more than a few metres in front of you... it was a bit scary at times driving over suspension bridges that appeared to be hundreds of metres high, up steep grades for another couple of kms and then down again... well we all know what goes up must come down after all! AND it was my driving day too! The rain didn´t stop and we by passed some of the towns we had planned. Well who wants to see coastal towns like San Sebastian and Santander in torrential rain.
We did stop to take photos at one stage but the expanse of the mountains were lost in the photo.
We did stop to take photos at one stage but the expanse of the mountains were lost in the photo.
No comments:
Post a Comment