Easter 2019 - Day 6 – A new plan has been made!

The route this day took us from Southern Spain, through Andorra and into Southern France. A long day on the road.

Approximate time out caching/traveling: 14 hours
Total driving distance: 984,5 km / 611.7 mi
Total caches found: 12
Total DNF: 1
Famous places visited: Andorra
Most memorable cache: GC1N42B St. Joan de Caselles (Andorra)
Biggest surprise: How impossible it was to find souvenirs in Andorra
Weather: Clouds, rain, some sun
Temperature range: 14-21°C

Early start in the fog

Since we had a long way ahead of us, and we didn’t know how far we were able to drive yet, we had to get up early. So we gathered all the remote controls, and left the hotel before sunrise. The weather was wet and foggy, so it was probably a good thing that we had a bit to drive until we got to the first cache…

Long way between the caches

The fog did eventually lift, and it was at least a bit more pleasant to drive. Since we had limited time to make new plans, we only had a couple caches planned along the long way to Andorra. The caches was so far between, that we had to make some extra stops at random rest stops (which for some strange reason doesn’t have caches on them).

We spent large parts of the day on toll roads, which meant high speed limits and less traffic. That made it a lot easier to reach Andorra before it got too late.

We’re getting closer

It was eventually time to leave the highway, and drive the last hour or so on smaller country roads, taking us through several small Spanish towns, and some not so small. There was also considerably shorter time between each cache stop now.

A new country!

And then we finally reached the border. The crossing was not as we had anticipated at all – they didn’t even require anyone to stop at the checkpoint. The first cache we had planned to stop at, was on the wrong side of the road (no left turn allowed), and the place looked overcrowded. So we stopped at GC7XR39 XARI-CAMPER IN THE RIVER ♫♪♩♫ instead. And this cache marked the fifth new country on this trip!

Traffic, traffic, everywhere

Andorra was stressful. Cars and people everywhere. Lots of traffic, and almost nowhere to park.

We had to skip some of the caches we had planned, but with a great tip from rragan on Slack, we managed to find a nice bonus cache.

We also stopped on another bonus cache, and a bonus DNF. We tried stopping at several places to find souvenirs (we collect keyrings from places we’ve been), but all they sold were traditional tax free goods…

Time to find a hotel

We realized (too late) that Andorra is not a part of the EU, and we had to pay to use our data connection in Andorra. So we decided to wait with the hotel booking until we crossed the border to France. Once we eventually made it across, we found a nice hotel in Foix. And we still had some hours to drive to get there…

France in the dark

We didn’t get to see much of France this day, as the sunset started not long after we crossed the border. After driving on dark French country roads for a while, we finally arrived at the hotel. It was a pleasant surprise when the staff spoke perfect English, and we got a rather big room – with a much more comfortable bed than the night before (that one was horrible).