Chris, Melle, Homer and Roxy on Tour

The Pyrenees and all its rugged beauty I've only skied three weeks in the Pyrenees so admittedly these thoughts are from a fairly minimal experience.   I’m not an expert, and have limited experience of 5 resorts in Pyrenees so maybe not everything is true of everywhere.  I haven't gone to the trouble of checking all the technical specifications of mountain peaks and average annual snowfall over the last 100 years either - these are just my thoughts following spending 2 months in Alps last year and a month in Pyrenees this. 😁 It seems to me that nearly everyone, especially from the UK and northern european countries goes to the Alps for their winter holiday so the resorts there have especially large size and infrastructure particularly for alpine skiing.  For example the ski lifts seem to have considered every slope and possibility and access to slopes is frequent and convenient.  The free ski buses in the Alps have routes throughout resorts to make sure it's as...

Wow - I love Cauterets!!!  But what’s  so special about it? Cauterets is  a thermal spa town and  ski resort but the fact that it's a proper town, right up in the Pyrenees at 1000m and has a buzz about it that's more than just skiing and bathing. To me it has a depth to it that some ski towns I've visited don't have. Tourists mingle well in the town and we were made to feel most welcome, and specially in the sports bar 😆, possibly because we were a bit of a novelty being English - we only came across a couple of English speaking blokes in the 10 days we were there.  The winding streets of tall, Napoleonic buildings are enchanting with residences, boulangeries, boucheries, thermal baths, an open market, bars, creperies, restaurants, ski shops and tourist-tat shops all come together to make a bustling place to be, especially near the Hotel Le Ville where we sat a few times people-watching with a coffee or beer in our hand. I love the winding street...

Yes, we’ve made it and we’ve now had almost a whole week in the Pyrenees. I probably should say the French Pyrenees as there is of course Andorra and also there are Spanish Pyrenees too as the mountains create a natural border for all three countries. But we’re here in France with the most major town (that we have to drive down to fill up with LPG gas for our heating and cooking) being Lourdes. We didn’t know you could ski in the Pyrenees (other than Andorra) until we read an article about it and as we were planning to travel down to Andalusia in Spain and we would be passing by we thought why don’t we stop and have a look around. And a little ski while we’re here, if we can. And can we ski? Yes we can - the French Pyrenees has something like 14 different ski resorts ranging from the largest in Grand Tourmalet with over 100km of pistes to very small ones with just learner slopes. View from Grand Tourmalet pass Of course although we love to ski we also like to get a flavour of the loc...