Andorra

Andorra, the 21st and last country that we've visited on our 6 month long tour around Europe, suffers somewhat by comparison with where we've been before. This tiny country (which calls itself a Principality even though it is now a democratic republic and was formerly an episcopality) is sandwiched quite neatly between France and Spain. So neatly in fact that you don't notice any disruption to the outline of either country, which I'm sure is one of the reasons why it still exists. It's also the only country where Catalan is the official language.

Having been to all the other European micro-states, it seemed silly not to satisfy our curiosity and pass through Andorra on our way to La Alberca, especially as, of all the micro-states, Andorra is the most curious. Squashed between two powerful neighbours, both with rival claims to sovereignty - France through the Count of Foix and Spain through the Bishop of La Seu d'Urgell - you would have thought it would have ended up being partitioned like Navarre, another Pyrranean state. Instead the joint sovereignty arrangement lasted all the way from 1278 right through to a referendum that lead to formal independence in 1993. I could only come up with Anglo-Eygptian Sudan when trying to think of other joint-sovereignty arrangements, but that didn't last a century and can hardly compete.
I'm sure Andorra was quite pretty once, and indeed the roads into the country from both France and Spain offer spectacular views as their hairpin their way up the Pyrenees through woods turning red and gold (on the French side; on the Spanish side they were still a lush green). Once inside the country, however, the views are marred by tangles of cable cars and urban sprawl.

Andorra is basically a series of steep river valleys in the middle of which sits the capital, Andorra la Vella, and ski slopes. The bland apartment blocks and bargain-stuffed shops (Andorra has a sales tax of only 4%) hem in the road, which only increases the claustrophobic feeling the steep valley walls create. A European cul-de-sac until the 20th century, Andorra took off as a smugglers' crossroads during the Spanish Civil War and WWII, and since then it seems to have been trying to turn itself into the world's biggest duty free hall. Ironic really, seeing as it doesn't have an airport.

We stopped for a coffee and then bought some supplies in one of the supermarkets before having the novel experience of a customers officer examining Sheena and quizzing us on our purchases - we've been asked before (Switzerland, Croatia), but nobody has ever bothered to look thus far! Our three bottles of port and slab of beers didn't qualify as contraband so within a few minutes we were back in Spain.

Oh to be in Audeland, now that spring is here...

Neither of us has been in France during April before, and the landscape is thus a surprise to us, and a very pleasant one at that. Whereas in summer or autumn, when we are both used to visiting, we would expect to see fields of flourishing vines laid out in stringent rows, we find gnarled, bare stumps strapped to their wires, starting to wear the merest of green garlands as the first buds open.

In the past we've been greeted with golds, browns and dusky greens as sun burned fields give way to parched forests; instead the lush greens of young wheat fields are broken by the bright yellow of rape and the nut-brown of ploughed soil, freshly drenched by spring downpours. The French don't go in for fences, so while in England our roadside views are impeded by high stone walls or hedges, here the long, straight avenues allow us vistas of many kilometres across fields and orchards, often catching sight of beautiful buildings as we drive, sometimes covered with frothy mauve wisteria or surrounded by sprinklings of needle pines.

On the drive south to Carcassonne on the river Aude we had an added pleasure; the snowy ridges of the Pyrenees rising up like a glowing white wall in the distance. It's so easy to imagine how, to superstitious folk in times past, they must have seemed like the edge of the world.

In the hills, where sightlines are more restricted, the winding roads take us through woods that are just at their turning point, with acer, alder and poplar racing ahead, sprouting pale green and yellow leaves, while oak, ash and birch lag behind, still brown and winter-spindly.

It really is a wonderful time to visit and while the occasional downpour or drizzle make it nice to have an interesting city to visit, or a warm fire to sit by, generally the spring sunshine and emerging plantlife make the journey just as exciting and fulfilling as the arrival.