Ups and Downs to Aínsa, Aragon, Spain

Zagan the motorhome is relieved he has both his sides intact. The yellow-classification roads here in the Spanish Pyrenees are wider than the white ones, but only just, and we’ve squinted our way through 2 hours of ’em today. After a failed attempt to park deep in the mountains, he’s in a cracking free (out of season) car park alongside the medieval village of Aínsa (N42.41859 E0.13354).

Chatting over Lidl’s finest lager and tinto de verano in Mark and Lucy’s Frankia motorhome last night, the impact this blog may or may not have started to rattle about in my head. Those guys spent three years implementing their exit strategy from life running a shop, and had made reference to our blog as they went along. “We feel like we know you” is a phrase we’ve come to get used to from folks we meet out on the road who’ve read the blog. From our side, it feels very odd, since we rarely know much about the other guys. When we were back home we were too busy to spend much time reading other folk’s blogs, and now we’re on the road we rarely read them either (don’t ask me why – I don’t know – as many of them are just fantastic). The overwhelming feeling upon meeting people who’ve read this blog is “arrrhhhh, I hope these guys realise we’re just very, very normal folk and don’t expect us to be anything else”.

Fortunately Mark and Lucy’s expectations were low enough that we managed to scrape over the bar, and we had a great night talking about life, lifestyle, freedom, passive income and plans. Effectively they’ve moved lock stock into their Frankia, and what a beautiful home it is (check it out at www.wheresfrankie.co.uk). Very well thought through, at under 7m it had an electric drop-down overcab bed like our Hymer, but the Frankia one also slides outwards, creating a king-sized bed you can sleep lengthways to the van in – wow! The table in the lounge area slid both ways, and folded out and back in. It had a separate shower area, keeping the loo dry. Under the cassette in the loo compartment sat a spare cassette, for extended off-grid action. It had a double floor like Zagan for over-wintering in the cold and creating more storage space. In a rear locker sat an in-situ water hose, which you just pulled out and attached to the tap – no external fill point to fiddle with – same for the 230V hook-up lead. A very impressive home.

Charlie decided he prefers Mark and Lucy’s Frankia to our Hymer!

Breakfast, some editing and a cleaning session hoovering out Zagan ensured we’d all (aka, I had) suitably sobered up to hit the road. By the way, we bought a Black & Decker 12V vacuum cleaner for this tour, and it’s been very good – pulling up stacks of grey dirt and dog fur from the carpet. Anyway, onto the road with us, first stop: the Repsol petrol station around the corner which flogs LPG (autogas here). An earlier attempt at getting the Spanish-style LPG gun to attach to our adaptor was abandoned in Pamplona when the thing just wouldn’t attach. A second attempt here had the same effect; I nipped into the garage and held up the adaptor: ‘bale?’ I asked. ‘Si, si’ came the reply, so we have the right bit of kit. I tried again and this time the gun held – not sure why.

Spanish LPG adaptor needed to refill our GasIT tanks

And north. The idea was to drive 40 mins up towards France, to the village of Torla, and from there do some gentle (lazy) walking in the Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido. 40 minutes of more elbow-in-squeeze-past-stuff-wincing driving later and we arrived to find we were persona non grata in Torla.

A heat pumped in my shoulder from whatever bit of physiology gets uppity when I’m driving the twisties, and although we’d driven north, my sense of humour had gone south. The car park was big enough for hundreds of cars and buses but nah, we couldn’t sleep here. It’s completely fair of course: the area is a national park, and UNESCO-listed no-less, but my shoulder hurt and being forced back into the tight roads wasn’t on my agenda. Arse. Ju checked with the tourist office and confirmed there **might** be two remaining campsites open, possibly. Previous experience of trying to find out-of-season formal camping in Spain was that there is no out-of-season formal camping in Spain, they’re all shut, the owners in Mallorca supping sangria. Again, not true, but my shoulder hurt. Blub, blub. The other news was the main walk is 6 hours long and no dogs are allowed. A cheese and onion sandwich was munched, and we rolled wheels east.

Walking route from Torla

Torla – to the north are mountains, gorges and waterfalls

Just as we exited Torla a Spanish motorhome nipped in front of us. Good man. A ‘wind shadow’ as we call ’em, these guys made the driving a bit easier as they helped slow down and sweep oncoming traffic to one side. Gracias!

Our wind shadow. Motorhomes don’t quite fit on one side of these roads…

And on we went, another 80 minutes (I counted ’em all) of tight road, edging past the odd lorry and cleanly passing oncoming cars more with use of the force than anything else.

Finally, finally, we drove into Aínsa, disregarding satnav’s ludicrous suggestion to drive up a narrow uphill side road to get to the parking, finding ourselves driving out of town, and 3 point turning it back to said narrow road and nailing it up. The car park at the top is cracking, with a 3 minute walk to the town and a great view of the mountains ahead (which must have been a right pain to nip over with your invading army of Christians!). The town’s a lovely little rock-walled tourist trap, but the people are friendly, making conversation about Charlie, and the wee streets are nice to wander. The last evening sun warmed us under the arches of a bar as we supped chocolate milk and coke – the drinks of the tourist-god-worshipper.

Just a few miles of vertical rock sit between us and France. Maps have been pored over, fingers dragged along yellow and red lines, over cols and between countries. Books and databases of sleeping spots have been inspected. Locations of possible stock-up supermarkets in Spain assessed. The idea of driving through Andorra mooted. Shoulder pain made its point out loud: no more tiny roads for a bit, me back’s killin’ me. And with that the plan has been set. Watch this space for the next thrilling instalment of ourtour folks. Where will those wandering carefree hairy muppets go next?

Cheers, Jay

P.S. if you can work out what’s going on in this next picture, let us know would you – we’re bemused!