Tuesday 7 January – Foix to El Catllar

Foix to El Catllar - 187 miles

Not quite as cold during the night and we were up early as we had a long driving day ahead of us. Breakfast and we were again able to do a full service before heading back to the main road. Today we planned to transit Andorra, a new country for us, and the map showed some serious mountain driving. Fortunately the weather forecast was excellent, indeed significantly warmer than normal so we looked forward to some good scenery.

It wasn't long before we started climbing quickly into the snow-capped mountains and soon reached the snow line at about 5000 ft. The roads were clear and dry, with no apparent recent snowfall, so no problems there although we are prepared with winter tyres. Higher and higher, we eventually came to the border with Andorra where we were held up a few minutes at the police checkpoint, although they didn't bother us.

Andorra is a strange blend of France and Spain; we couldn't work out which was predominant as names were sometimes French, sometimes Spanish. We did notice the fuel was ridiculously cheap, around 94p a litre, which made us regret filling up yesterday at £1.33! All the towns were quite modern, usually consisting of a main street with small offshoots although there were also a few quite large, such as Andorra la Vella itself. There was a lot of skiing industry evident too but as there wasn't a great deal of snow it was quiet in that respect.

Andorra is a low tax country and not actually part of the EU so when we crossed back into Spain we were briefly searched and asked if we had bought any tobacco or alcohol – which we hadn't so were on our way quite quickly. About 20km further on we pulled off the road into a layby of sorts for lunch – Jamie was more than ready for a break after over 3 hours; mind you so were we!

Up to now the weather had been absolutely superb but as we got further south we encountered mist and low cloud with the accompanying low temperatures, a bit of a disappointment after the last few days. We were heading for the coast at Tarragona, having by-passed Lleida on excellent main roads, then as we crested a mountain pass near Tarrega the mist suddenly cleared and we were back to sunshine, the valleys below still hidden by low cloud banks.

Having already checked for an overnight stop we had programmed a nice-looking aire at El Catllar, about 10km from Tarragona, and TomTom took us there without fuss. A very pleasant spot on the edge of a small town in the late afternoon sun, we were satisfied with our choice so parked up and put the kettle on. Although mileage has not been huge, in fact it was only 29 miles across Andorra, it has still been a lot of driving and we're ready for a break. We'll see how we feel in the morning but are considering stopping for a couple of nights. Bren in particular is suffering from a persistent cold so a break would be a help.