Geoff writes: the forecast for today had been gradually deteriorating. This morning, it was giving cloudy all day, variable amounts of precipitation, and possible thunderstorms. We had been planning to go to Port del Comte to ski, but decided not to bother, since the view would be lousy, and it was a long drive on very small – and probably not often ploughed – roads. So we decided to go to the museum first, see what the weather actually did, then maybe  go to Masella, which is on our way home anyway, if it was not as bad as forecast.

La Seu d’Urgell is an interesting place and we thought the museum would cover a lot of the history of the town. It is very close to Andorra. When we were parking up last night, we’d started chatting to someone else feeding the meter, and asked her if the car would be OK parked overnight on the street. She said it would be fine – no-one bothers with car crime here, it doesn’t make enough money – the big money is in smuggling from Andorra (mostly tobacco).

So we went to the museum. We were the only people there, and the attendants were really pleased to see us, and one of them, an old guy, decided to give us a personal tour, detailing every exhibit. Unfortunately, the museum was a church museum rather than a general museum, so we got in depth information about dozens of Christian relics, crosses, saints, churches, paintings… not our idea of a good time. The other problem was that he took a shine to Judith, and in the guise of showing her around managed to do a bit of surreptitious groping. And the traditional Spanish kiss on each cheek, turned into real clinch with her. And all this in front of the Virgin Mary!

We escaped as fast as possible, and went to Masella. All around there were snow showers, but Masella was clear (but cloudy). We skied for a while, then went for coffee. On our first run after that I wiped out quite badly. Both of us hate skiing without sun, because it becomes so difficult to read the snow. I wasn’t going particularly fast, but took a bad fall and hit my head really hard. I am certain that had I not been wearing a helmet, I would have done some serious damage. As it is, I’ve just got a slight headache.

So an interesting day, mostly for the wrong reasons.

See photos of today.

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