For really the first time, my brother and I got to visit the Pyrenees mountains that serve as a natural boundary between France and Spain yesterday.
While I may have technically traversed through the Pyrenees during a family vacation while still extremely young, I really only have one brief memory of that trip. My father and brother were crossing a mountain stream, while my mom and I watched. As a little guy, it bothered me that I could not participate in such a cool activity. Also, I remember looking up at one point and seeing snow atop a mountain.
That's it.
To be sure, there seems no way to know for sure if those mountains and that stream were even in the Pyrenees, since we also crossed parts of the Alps during that same trip.
So while I always wanted to explore the different regions of France, the Pyrenees always stood out as a region that seemed particularly intriguing.
Yesterday, my brother and I got that chance.
We crossed the Pyrenees mountains on our way to Barcelona, Spain.
Obviously this time, we were both old enough to appreciate it.
They rose dramatically ahead while driving through otherwise normal farmland.
It was an overcast day, so we couldn't even be sure that it was the mountains and not some darker clouds. As we got closer, however, it seemed like we could make out the mountains more distinctly. The shorter foothills in front of the taller, towering peaks behind them.
We reached them remarkably quickly. It felt like we went through the foothills and then saw some more dramatic, taller mountains. Then a tunnel and, on the other side of that tunnel, we were in the middle of a tall mountain range.
The landscape did seem to alter that quickly and dramatically. At least by car.
Before long, we were passing through some mountain villages. Everywhere, there were signs for Andorra. We passed remarkably close to the border of that country, but decided to skip it due to both time constraints and issues with our fragile GPS. Losing the signal in the middle of a mountain range just felt unwise.
Eventually, we did reach the Spanish border. There was a regular seeming exit, and then a sign revealing that we had now entered Spain.
It was on the Spanish side that we really got an intimate taste of the Pyrenees.
Our GPS told us to follow a route - believe it was N-260, if memory serves correctly. We turned onto this road and it just kept on climbing higher and higher. At points, a guard rail was the only barrier between the typically narrow, European road and a very long drop to the woods below. Before long, there were cows grazing on the sides, often with free access to the roadway. This was not the kind of driving that I was used to.
We got through it, though.
On the other side of the mountain that our car basically climbed, there were more villages. Also a mountain stream that apparently served as the source of a name brand bottled water.
Not long after that, the mountains began to recede a bit from the road that we traveled. Soon, it felt as if they were almost just a part of the backdrop. Merely a part of the scenery.
Of course, I stopped at times to take pictures of the beautiful mountain scenery.
Enjoy.
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