By Layla
Most of our trips start with a vigorous Tripadvisor phase - examining every hotel, restaurant and activity til we are satisfied that we will have an excellent time. But not this time. Instead we booked a ‘hike, bike and raft’ action adventure tour to Andorra with Intrepid Travel in the January sale, purchased flights to Toulouse, and thought nothing more of it. In my case, I particularly did not think of any appropriate physical activity preparations that might be indicated for an action adventure tour...
But at any rate, we awoke on Saturday morning in Toulouse with a full day before tour was to commence with only the sketchiest of plans. But the sun was shining and we breakfasted in a pretty square with croissants and coffee and beautiful fresh orange juice and delighted in our first day of holiday. We walked all over the city, resting in a riverside park with our books, browsing specialty shops in the charming web of streets limed by pink brick buildings, lunched in a little deli, and had hilarious ice cream cones for dessert, somehow fashioned into the shape of multi-petal flowers. We explored Victor Hugo Market, rode the carousel, then went to see the new lesbian-themed movie Disobedience in a brilliant old cinema called the American Cosmograph. Afterwards, having topped up in a French patisserie, we went to see a (rubbish) new photography exhibition in an old water tower, before finishing the afternoon with tea and scones and books in a little tearoom.
Having returned to the hotel to change for evening, we started off in No 5, a bar that last year was declared the world’s best wine bar. We had many tiny samples of delicious wine and some quite astounding cold soup tapas. We lamented being vegetarian so we couldn’t try ALL the tapas but instead established ourselves at a Moroccan restaurant on the pretty square of that morning’s breakfast where there was now a massive public ballroom dance. We munched our hummous and watched the dancers and declared it a delightful day.
But what was the tour going to be like? The next morning we Ubered back to the airport and were united with the group who were to be our friends for the next week. This is always a tricky moment on tours: will it be 10 people who are already best friends? People with whom we won’t click? Lots of children? No - we struck lucky with smart, interesting people - mostly women, mostly our age group, and all friendly and cheery. We jumped in the cars and drove up into the mountains and out of the EU and into the tiny country of Andorra. We pulled into our hotel in Soldeu and our tour had officially begun.
Well technically there were no activities scheduled til the next day so after a sociable lunch Roz and I set out on an unplanned 6k hike in our dresses, a lovely woodland walk til we got to the end and had to slide down a practically vertical exit slope on our bottoms. But we still caught the bus back to our hotel in time for the briefing (helpful) and included hotel meal (school dinners-esque). Sadly the World Cup was on and everyone was watching that instead of being sociable so we played some table football and retreated to our little room with G&Ts.
Our first day was a hike and it was brilliant, if a little too much steep uphill for a girl who had failed to prepare... The Andorra hills are really beautiful, and brimming with flowers. We hiked up to a mountain lake for lunch and got back in time for pre-dinner ice cream at a nearby hotel. The evening was rather similar to the last.
The next day was Roz’s birthday, and one of the best days of our holiday. We drove up a mountain then cycled down it, in lovely sunshine, pretty much freewheeling all the way as glorious countryside sped past. Then we cycled along a pretty woodland/lakeside path, eventually reaching a zipline/high wires park. Next thing we knew, despite our terror, Roz and I were in the air! We turned out to rather like ziplining, though were less keen on things like tarzan swings high in the air, or wriggling through barrels, again suspended in the air, or walking along high wires like deranged tightrope walkers. But still, we got almost to the end of the course before terror overtook us with a particularly large tarzan swing, and we had to be lowered to the ground for a well-earned lunch of cheese sandwich, crisps, chocolate and fruit, our staple lunch for the week.
After everyone had finished, we set out on more biking to a lookout point, round the lake, and more downhill freewheeling all the way to an ice cream shop which is of course the optimum biking destination. Off home for a shower and dinner, they very sweetly baked Roz a birthday cake and we sang happy birthday before tucking in to this very welcome dessert - mmm. Then it was into the bus for a thrilling evening excursion into the big city (well, Andorra’s biggest city, which isn’t big at all) to see Cirque du Soleil! An unexpected treat, in a big tent in a park. The acrobats were brilliant, leaping and zooming and balancing in a way that might even have been MORE impressive than our own high wire performance earlier that day. A fantastic evening.
The next day was whitewater rafting for which we had to drive to a river in nearby Spain. Very similar to Andorra except we could use our phones’ data as we were back in the EU. Squeezed into wetsuits, we braved the river and laughed and screamed our way down 15km of river through grade 3 rapids with names like ‘the washing machine’ til eventually we came out to find lots of spectators and TV cameras - apparently we were in the middle of a canoe race or some such! We waved at the people and retreated to the rafting centre to swim in a nice pool amd enjoy drinks and books in a pretty garden before heading home for dinner and a quite hilarious game of charades using the brilliant Heads Up app. Hooray for a World Cup rest night!
On Thursday we were back on our bikes, up another mountain, this one part of the Tour De France! Luckily again our destination was DOWN the hill. We freewheeled some of it, and did a little offroading in a mild mountain biking sort of way, includimg along the famous Iron Route, and picnicked in a charming spot, before continuing our way downhill, then after the obligatory ice cream stop, driven up to a viewpoint before freewheeling most of the way home: wheeeeee! The hotel restaurant was having a night off so that evening we all went to a tapas restaurant and had the only delicious meal of our trip.
We longed for a rest day but our tour guides had dodgily decided on their own holidays before the official end of our trip so they told us our rest day would be the last day (when they’d prematurely departed). WFriday was thus another giant hike up a mountain. Despite the steep uphill it was quite startlingly beautiful, climbing up alongside a river filled with waterfalls and lined with flowers. We lunched at another mountain lake and got down in time for people to watch the World Cup, which had disappointingly resumed. Roz and I took our books to the ice cream hotel and indulged in both for the rest of the afternoon. We mused on eating in a Soldeu restaurant but ended up back in our hotel having unpleasant food again. Oops.
On our last day we worried about lack of plan and getting angsty about our imminent holiday end. But luckily we were distracted by deciding to do a giant mountain hike, accompanied by two nice women from the trip. Up and up and up we climbed. Again it was glorious with beautiful sunshine and blue sky. Again we ate lunch at a mountain lake. Again we turned and headed steeply down for home. But this time it started to rain. Then thunder. Then hail. We tried to get down the steep rocky path as quickly as possibly as the hailstones became bigger and bigger, pinging off our exposed skin, stinging our neck, face and hands. We huddled under a rock in the deluge, then when it calmed a little, we proceeded only for it to get worse than ever. I’ve never been out in such a massive storm, much less up a mountain 2 hours from home. The hail lay on the ground like big white marbles. We dashed. We shrieked. We shivered. And finally we were home in hot showers and facing soaking soggy shoes and clothes that demanded to be packed because at 6:30am the next day, we were leaving for Toulouse Airport. We spent a final night in the hotel dining room, paid our gin bill, said a final farewell, and headed to bed in preparation for an early start and the end to a rather excellent holiday.
