Photo Album Pyrenees
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As usual we spent some weeks in our vacation apartement at the Costa Brava in northern Spain, but this summer we extended our Spanish holidays with a week traveling through the Pyrenees.  Kees has too many Jaguars and too little annual leave, so the obvious solution was to take the MkII along to Spain.  You should never chalenge fate, and surely not when driving classic cars, so we took the auto-train from  's Hertogenbosch to Narbonne in southern France.  After  a relaxed trip to Spain and two weeks on the beach and sailing our tiny boat,  we traveled in our magnificent Jag  from the east coast to the west coast. 

We did not really venture into the high mountains, but followed the road along the foothills.  Very quite roads of excellent quality and no steep passes.  The mountainscape on the horizon was ever impressive. The Jag performed sterling and brought us home without missing a beat.

 

 

Foto: Laura Goudswaard

Only the occasional steep climb, such as the one to Montserrat, resulted (much to the disturbance of Laura) in overheating and boiling coolant, but only when when stopping at the top, not as long as we kept going. 

When visiting a European petrol station with our Jag, we always have to swallow when the fast spinning  numbers (and that in real money and not in roupees) have to be paid.  In Cambodia petrol is just over half a dollar a liter, which is half of what it costs in Europe. Half a tank full of petrol for just ten dollars sounds better than paying one hundred guilders and still your tank isn't full! Not that the MkII has an exorbitant fuel consumption (we clocked and touring through the mountains we used 12 liters for a hundred kilometers), but still we didn't mind Spain has the cheapest petrol in Europe. 

 

It was actually a very sparsely population region we were traveling through, with little towns and some villages, located in areas of magnificent natural beauty. Fortresses, castles, little churches and tiny hamlets, all restored to original condition, sometimes a bit too much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Spain there is a hotelchain of "Paradores". These are mediaeval monasteries, fortresses and castles, converted into fine hotels, (sometimes lonely on a mountain top, sometimes in the middle of town). On our trip we spent the night in some of these Paradores and it was very worth while. Also for Laura, no fan of motoring her self, this was every day a highlight of the day to look forward to. 

On the photo's left and right, we leave the castle of Cardona after breakfast, the place where we spent our first night on our trip.