Sunday 14th September 2008

On to the mountains then this time back to the Central Pyrennes. We drove 200 miles from the coast to our surprise in ever increasing temperatures and arrived in the village of Espot in the Parque National dÁiguestortes y Estany de Sant Maurici - snappy eh! we will call it stan for short. The following day went to the lake in the title which was set in a beautiful valley surrounded by very photogenic mountains and started to walk up to the col at the end of the valley then something we had almost forgotten about happened it RAINED and did it rain. First wetting for the goretex on our trip. So abandoning the original walk we took a lower circuit and as we gotback to the lake the rain stopped and the sun shone. Never mind we thought tomorrow will be OK. Oh no that night the weather took a turn for the worse rain followed by a significant drop in temperature in the night down to well into single figures. The next day walk we completed but the cloud was so low we had very little to see on the tops. Also the peaks around us had snow. This pattern was repeated throughout our stay some sun, a bit of rain, snow ever getting to lower levels etc. However we managed 4 energetic walks in total in an incredibly scenic area that is totally unspoilt as private vehicles are not allowed the only road access by 4WD taxi run by park authority. Incidently the camp site we stayed at was excellent and will probably when the voting is in go straight to the top of our list. I even met another Paul Thomas only the second one I have ever met and to cap that on a site that only had about 25 pitches used there was a third Thomas but this time a French one. The campsite owners got a bit confused! Espot was a pleasant little village basically a ski resort but with good amenities and a wonderful situation. The area is apparently famous for its white water rafting it was tempting but in those temperatures far too cold.

This will be our last full day in Spain as we leave for Andorra tomorrow where we should be staying for about 3 days before we enter France again the country with decent road signage.

Apologise for no pictures on blog but cannot upload at present but look at flickr site on our return especially ones from STAN.