Although we mostly avoided them, the frogs have some good highways! Oh that reminds me, good tip if you are going to be road-tripping through France: they absolutely love their toll roads (and they're not cheap!). I thankfully knew this in advance, and my GPS can be set to avoid toll roads. So either find yourself a good GPS, use Google Maps as that can also be set to avoid tolls, or try to avoid the highways altogether because the tolls will add up!

Day seven (or something) was a 350km drive from France's equivalent of Glasgow to the little country of Andorra, but we first stopped off in Perpignan near France's south-eastern border with Spain so Katie could empty her bladder, only to fill it again with beer hehe.

Upon leaving Perpignan the car told me to check its oil, which I did and although a little low I'm not sure what it was complaining about. It then shut up so I put it down to it having just clocked 10,000kms on the odometer and it maybe being a routine maintenance thing, but a couple days later it complained some more and refused to go away. Bloody hire cars.

Andorra is the sixth-smallest country in the world, covering 470 square-kilometres, and is squished between France and Spain. Due to its location in the eastern Pyrenees mountain range, Andorra consists predominantly of rugged mountains (and just look at those roads - I had a blast ripping the car around those while it was screaming for oil!). Tourism is the mainstay of Andorra's economy, with around nine million of us visiting every year. Andorra is home to around 70,000 with Andorrans themselves being a minority in their own country; Spaniards, Portuguese, French, Britons, and Italians resident in Andorra make up two thirds of the population. According to the US Census Bureau, Andorra has the world's longest life expectancy at 83.5 years; must be the mountain air.

This was a common sight: animals wandering free on the roadside.

They got that right!

Moo.

The things I knew about Andorra before arriving were that it's full of construction (and if you like cranes you'll love it here)...

And its capital, Andorra la Vella, is an absolute traffic nightmare (hence the cops everywhere doing nothing but directing traffic!).

Andorra is a shopaholics dream with over 2,000 shops (one for every 40 inhabitants). We based ourselves in Andorra la Vella for a couple nights in another campsite full of permanent residents but a far cry to the shithole we'd left the night before near Montpellier.

The view of Andorra la Vella from the campsite.

The following day we drove up into the mountains, and it was all bringing back fond memories of mountainous Switzerland with its gorgeous little villages in valleys surrounded by huge cliffs.

Yesterday it was cows everywhere, and today it's horses.

Neigh.

Andorra offers some of the best skiing in the Pyrenees. In the last five years its resorts have invested huge sums of moolah in mountain cafes and restaurants, chairlifts, gondolas, snow-making machines and so on.

Once the snows have melted there's great walking and hiking trails in abundance. Check out mountaineer Barbie up there ;)

It's a hard life.

Back in Andorra la Vella is the very futuristic-looking Caldea Spa. Caldea is Europe's largest spa complex, and its lagoons, hot tubs, and saunas are fed by warm thermal springs. There's a couple of restaurants in there as well - very cool place!

Roman baths.

Outdoor thermal pools with an artificial current that pushes you along.

Yup, life is hard ;)