Andorra

BEDFORD ROAD: After negotiating our way out of San Sebastian it was on to Pamplona, the other fabled Spanish city of Hemingways The Sun Also Rises, better known as the home of the Running of the Bulls. Or to Aussie bogans: Pamps! (ie. Gees mate Pamps was fucking grouse ay? Some bull totally fucked me mate Macca up. It was a better piss up than Gallipoli though!)

It wasn't really a major stop, we just ate lunch on the main town square, visited the bullring, checked out the Hemingway statue and street signs, walked the route of the running of the bulls and then spent the next hour trying to find our way out of city of about 100,000 people. My navigating tactics became so desperate that I told Rob to drive in the opposite direction towards France. Then, I figured, if we did a U-ey we'd be going the right way. If only it was that simple. We eventually did find our way out of town and even ended up on a more obscure path of the El Camino de Santiago, taking in the beautiful crumbling churches and forts on the hill tops, intercut with giant lakes built for absording the thaw of a Spanish spring.

As we scaled the Pyrenees we took in the stunning scenery, the road winding along side gorges, disappearing around the side of cliffs, we struggled to remember the name of the hotel we'd booked in Andorra. By the time we'd driven halfway across Andorra to the ski town of Arinsal we still couldn't remember. Luckily there were only a handful of hotels in Arinsal and one of them tweaked a visual memory.

The next day we visited what is billed as Europe's most futuristic spa. Take the virtual tour here. Words don't described it save to say I spent three of the most relaxing hours of my life there. That night (we'd moved into the capital Andorra la Vella by this point) we continued our Spanish rhythm one of the squares in town. On our last day we stocked up on insanely cheap duty free and Jaq and I took a cable car to the top of one of the mountains while the boys had another crack at Caldea.