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Snowboarding in the Spanish Pyrenees |
Please select a topic
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Overview of Spanish Pyrenees |
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Espot - a small spanish ski station, charming village, tends to get overrun by Spanish schoolkids |
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Vaqueira Beret - Spain's most commercialised Pyrenean resort. Upmarket and sophisticated - comprises three linked ski areas. Some great views from the top of the Mirador run. |
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Boi Taull - wonderful rustic mountain village with a romanesque church, fantastic accommodation in a farmhouse, superb boarding territory. |
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Alp/Masella - horribly exposed ski area, high and windy, like snowboarding on concrete. |
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Vallter 2000 - tiny resort, lots of alternative attractions. |
Spanish Pyrenees - Overview of Our Trip |
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| With Katie having
mastered the essentials of snowboarding in Soldeu, we soon left the
bawdy bustle of Andorra for the relative serenity of the Spanish
Pyrenees. We first headed West to the small village of Espot
. This is a lovely village, with a cute little resort about 5 miles
up the road, but you wouldn't want to spend more than a couple of days
here. Before long, we moved on to the Val D'Aran. This involved driving up countless hairpin bends to the 2058m col at the head of the Val D'Aran, the Port de Bonaigua where we stoppe to take in the stupendous views. Our resort in the Val D'Aran was Vaqueira Beret, the swishest Spanish resort we visited. It was so swish in fact that the accommodation was way out of our league, but we managed to get a place at a knock-down rate just down the valley in the small and very attractive village of Sallardu. The accommodation prices here descend proportional with the altitude, so we subsequently stayed at the bottom of the valley, in the regional centre Viehla, in a small guest house run by a jolly old granny for about GBP 15 a night. |
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| Viehla is the largest place for
miles around. That said, it's a small town of no more than 10,000
inhabitants, at the foot of the Val D'Aran. It's a lively place, with
some great tapas bars, one of which is like barging in on a private
cocktail party, since the tapas are just laid out for you to help
yourself, the charge being calculated by the number of toothpicks on
your plate - very trusting. My favourite bar in Viehla was the Sidreria on the sun-drenched plaza iglesia, serving home made cider from unmarked wine bottles. Soaking up the sun and polishing off a bottle was great ... it was the best cider ever. |
 Slightly tipsy in the plaza - Viehla |
| From Viehla, we
travelled south to a resort called Boi Taull. The
ski station here is at the end of a 15 mile dead end road. At 2030m it
still had snow, which was a bonus, since most places seemed to be losing
it fast in the fierce sun. We stayed about 7 miles down the valley in a
huge ancient farmhouse, the Casa Baro, in the
village of Taull. This was undoubtedly my favourite place, both for the
snowboarding and for the village, which was a rustic haven of
tranquility. |
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| Heading south from Boi Taull, we made for La Pobla, a small town in the virtually isolated region of Pallares. Pallares boasts 'Ravine Walking' as one of its tourist attractions. Well we ended up ravine driving along a road which turned into a 27 mile dirt track. The old road in the valley was sadly being replaced by nasty concrete civil engineers ego gratification piece. We reached the town of La Pobla, the car caked in thick white dust, just as the light was starting to fade. La Pobla was also covered in dust, so we pressed on to Salas, a tiny fortified village, founded in the 9th Century and once a wealthy olive oil refining centre. | |
| From Salas, we pressed on towards the most
easterly ski stations in the Pyrenees, passing through the magnificent
Ravine des Gats, which makes the Cheddar Gorge look like an minor
irrigation ditch. We spent the late afternoon in Seu D'Urguell, seat of
the eponymous bishop of Urguell, who with the duke of Foix in France had
for centuries shared control over nearby Andorra.
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| The next ski resort we happened upon was Masella, in the Eastern Pyrenees - Spanish side. There was little to protect this area from fierce easterly winds, which whipped most of the snow off the top of the mountain, leaving unpleasant ice fields behind. It was like snowboarding on concrete here. | |
| Vallter 2000 is at the end of another long windy dead end road. There is no accommodation at the ski station itself, so we stayed at Villalonga, a small village down the valley. This is very much a 'weekend' resort, silent as a graveyard in the week, but teeming with people at the weekend. We had to camp in sub-zero temperatures on the Saturday night. | |
Return to 
Super Espot |
| Espot village The village itself is about five miles from the ski facilities. This is a charming mountain village, typical of many that we saw. The majority of the buildings in town seem to be smallholdings of some sort, with a menagerie of animals living in tiny crumbling barns on every street. In many cases, the owners live above their animals on second and third stories. You would hardly know there was a rsort nearby apart from the swarms. |
| The ski area when we were there was swamped with spanish school parties, where the kids seemed more interested in sly snogs, fags and booze than the skiing. Very rowdy. The skliing is adequate, but most of the reds and blacks can only be reached by way of very steep drag lifts - no fun on a snowboard. There are a couple of lifts serving some gentle, and blue runs, meandering through trees back to base. Thi is a cheap place to ski, but you must have own transport to get up to the slopes, and earplugs to deal with the swarms of kids. |
| Accommodation in Espot was easy to find. There are two or three hotels, which when we arrived were fully booked, but much more fun are the Casas Residencias or guest houses. There are two of these in town, both great value. |
| Local Tipples Whilst in town, we made a point of trying the local liqueurs. Ratafia is a dark, tarry liqueur which tastes like flat Vodka and Coke - yuk. We both liked the Pacharan an aniseed based job, quite sweet and strong. Both are good budget traveller drinks, i.e about a fifth the price ofan imported whiskey. |
Return to
Vaqueira Beret |
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| Vaqueira Beret is perhaps the most like an Alpine ski resort. It's smart, it has big hotels, swanky people in sweanky 4x4s, expensive lift passes, its own radio station, a little choo choo train to take people from car parks to ski lifts, fashionable clothes stores, trendy bars and trendy people, all of them with loadsamoney .... except us. | |
| The Ski Area at Vaqueira Beret extends across three valleys, all well serviced by chairlifts. Views from the top are excellent, the resort having one of the highest peaks for miles at over 2500m. | |
 Katie at the top of Vaqueira's huge Mirador red run |
.  Adrian jumping on the way back in to resort. |
Return to
Return to
Alp and Masella |
| Masella and La Molina ski resorts share one of the last 2000m+ mountains in the Pyrenees before the mediterranean. It's very exposed up here, and high winds often close the runs. Snowboarding here was highly unpleasant, since the runs were rock hard ice - the wind having blown all the snow off them, and the exposed part sof the montain were unbelievably cold and nasty. |
Return to
Vallter 2000 |
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| Skiing at Vallter 2000 was somewhat limited.
This is a small resort, with just three chair lifts and about six drag
lifts. The weather in Februaury had been unusually hot, and most of the
slopes were therefore closed, leaving really just two serviceable
pistes. Needless to say, we only stayed a day - it was pleasant enough. |
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| Walking in the Pyrenees As a change from Snowboarding, we went for a 15 km walk across the Pyrenees, from the lovely village of Setcases acoss three peaks to the village of Mollo. The route we chose was part of GR11, one of the Gran Recorridas (big paths) that cross Spain, which was fortunately very well marked. |
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| As we started to descend towards Mollo, the weather started to deteriorate, and it became obvious that we would not be able to return across the mountains. The alternative route by road was a good six hours walk, so we decided to hitchike. My experiences of hitching in the UK are that about one car in every hundred stops. In the first hour of walking, only twelve cars had even passed us - not looking good. Fortunately, the thirteenth car lurched to a stop, and a door opened. The driver was clearly in high spirits, and shared his botifarra and wine with us. Cool. |  Katie at the top of the first peak at 1908m |
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| Accommodation in this area is fairly thin on
the ground. There is no accommodation at the ski station itself, but
there are a number of pleasant villages further down the valley. The
most picturesque of these is the somewhat touristified village of
Setcases, which has several hotels, mostly full of pensionsers up to
enjoy the mountain air. Villalonga further down has two hostals, and we
stayed in the very clean Hostal Cal Maestre, for about GBP 30 per room.
The owners are very friendly.
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 Cold camping . |
Unfortunately, come the weekend, all stone built accommodation seemed to be fully booked, so we resorted to a tent at the local camp site. It was bloody freezing, and we were both glad when dawn finally arrived, whence we could revive ourselves with numerous cups of steaming coffee. The camp site also had a laundrette, the first we'd seen for ages, and our clothes were starting to smell a bit like the Manchego cheese we'd been eating, so we took advantage ... |
Clean at last |
| Adrian & Katie's World Tour News - Spain | Last Updated: 15 June 1999 |
| Web Page by Adrian Ball (adrian.ball@virgin.net) |
The
Ramblas in Seu D'Urguell. 
