Geoff writes: after skiing at Puigmal, we drove up the road to stay in Andorra. We’d booked a hotel over the internet for the night, right in the centre. Nice hotel, cheap, and offered parking and internet access. What it didn’t say was that the internet access was one euro per 15 minutes; and the parking cost a staggering 19 euros. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much choice – the hotel was in the centre of Andorra La Vella, and there isn’t much parking there at all. Andorra is just steep mountains, with not much space for anything else – it’s amazing they manage to fit a whole country in there.

Anyway, the skiing there is excellent. Today we skied at Arinsal, which is apparently the Brit hangout in Andorra. The French go to a different part. Not sure where the Andorrans go. Even the woman selling the ski passes was a Brit. It was a beautiful day, nicely groomed pistes, good, fast skiing, and not too many people. We had a great time, and it was far better skiing than Puigmal. We did a lot of runs, but nowhere near covered the whole resort of Vallnord, which Arinsal is part of – you’d need a few days for that. There was one particular black run I spent some time contemplating – looking at it from a distance it seemed really easy; looking at it from higher up, it seemed really steep! I was also put off by a sign on the button lift leading up to it, saying that the button lift was difficult, and the piste was really difficult. But in the end, we went up and did it, and actually it was fine, no problem at all. Glad I didn’t wimp out.

Andorra seems to be one of the main destinations for Brits going skiing. Parking apart, it is much, much cheaper than France, as cheap as Spain (maybe cheaper for some things), and, in our limited experience, seems a really good ski area. Apparently there are also a lot of Brits who live there but don’t ski – presumably for tax reasons, though I don’t know what they do with themselves all day, since apart from the mountains, there doesn’t seem to be much else there. Maybe they just get drunk on the cheap alcohol, and count their money (actually, not necessarily a bad way to spend your retirement).

In the evening we met up with with our friends Jessica Love and Ivan Ripoll – both paraglider pilots, though Ivan is in Andorra teaching speed riding. A great evening, and we stayed that night in their flat. Really nice to see them both.

See photos of today.

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