Saturday 7 January 2017

Oloron to Alcover - 212 miles

'Twas even colder last night and the waste drain tap froze. We also had to leave the heating on meaning the batteries took a bit of stick and also we used quite a bit of gas. However again it was a glorious morning and we got everything finished quite early for a change. But refilling the gas is becoming a priority and we have an app for the smartphone which shows where the nearest is – about 1km on the other side of town. TomTom found it of course and we had no problem this time.

Route today is through the Somport Tunnel into Spain and it was a lovely run up into the Pyrenees mountains on quite a small road, given it's importance, with a lot of narrow sections – fortunately it was very quiet. We had to stop halfway when the washer bottle ran dry and we needed to clean the windows to take photos of the super scenery. The tunnel itself was a non-event, just 8.5km of, well, tunnel. Popping out the other side into more fine scenery we joined a good road which became autovia (non-toll motorway)as we headed for Jacca then Huesca and Lleida. We could have chosen a lesser road but there wasn't much point, it still passed through the same scenery. But despite the brilliant sunshine it was still very cold as evidenced by the frosted over trees and bushes where the sun had yet to reach.

Around lunchtime we left the autovia looking for somewhere to stop and ended up in a tiny village square, not really suitable, and then had fun trying to extricate ourselves, not helped by a couple of lady Spanish car drivers who didn't seem to have a care about anybody else so that we had the occasional “breathe in” and squeeze past. Back to the main road and we found a fuel station with a picnic area adjacent so took the opportunity to refuel then break for lunch.

We had been plagued by one of the tyre pressure sensors occasionally telling us a tyre was deflating or inflating so Terry changed the battery – strange that this was the same one we had problems with in the summer, all the rest being fine. Hopefully we've fixed it.

Monasterio de El Pueyo

Back onto the road, joining the autovia again for a short while until we turned off for Tarragona, which was our aiming point on the Costa Dourada. As it was beginning to look like we'd run out of day Bren sorted a couple of aires out and we chose a car-park type spot in the walled town of Alcover. Although we did see a couple of other vans we ended up on our own, although the car park itself, the main one for the town, was quite busy throughout the evening.

We're almost on the Mediterranean coast now and it is noticeably warmer although we still need coats, even in the late sunshine, to walk the mutt – who is still demanding wee-wees every hour. The forecast for here is warmer days but still cold nights so we'll continue south.