Bluest
New member
We just completed a coast to coast trip across the Spanish Pyrenees from The Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and it was a wonderful experience with stunning scenery that I would recommend to anyone. I thought you might like to hear about what we did and se a few pictures. It was just my Wife, our Basset Hound and me in our trusty Defender 110. I've done a lot of on-road touring across Europe before, and have done one previous big off-road biased trip to Morocco about 18 months ago, So we have a little experience, but not experienced overlanders by any stretch. With over a 12 month gap since our last big trip, my travel withdrawal was really starting to kick in at the start of this year, so I was ready for another trip. We really wanted to get off the tarmac again so the Pyrenees seemed like a good place to go, somewhere we could easily get there and back in 3 weeks or so, where the weather would likely be good at the end of June, and that had the potential for stunning scenery and no crowds. It lived up to all of that. The trip coincided with a heat wave across Europe and we saw temps as high as 45C, which for an Englishman was somewhat of a challenge!
Route planning and navigation was done using a combination of tools. For the road sections, we used Google Maps and the TomTom Go Android app on a tablet. For the off-road sections, we bought a Vibraction road book (which also came with .gpx tracks), a Michelin paper map of North East Spain and the Locus Maps Pro app on the tablet. Using the tulip diagrams in the Vibraction book was great fun, to the point where I would love to do a trip using those and trip meter alone in the future.
We left home in Lancashire, England on the 22nd June and got into France via the Eurotunnel. It's by far the best way to get to mainland Europe in my experience, quick and no chance of sea sickness! This is before the main summer holidays in Europe, so the roads and campsite were quiet the whole time we were travelling. We stuck to the Autoroutes in France to get the miles out of the way with a couple of nights each camping in Epernay in the Champagne region (which we last visited a decade earlier on our honeymoon) and in the Tarn Gorge to break up the journey. In hindsight, this was too lazy a pace and I wish we had pushed on to have more time in the Pyrenees. The Landy doesn't enjoy these high speed roads and she lets us know it, too noisy to try to blast along at the 80mph limit, so it is policy to set the cruise control at 60 mph and sit in the right lane with the trucks. The lower speed helps a lot with the range to, getting about 420 miles between fill ups.
Our jumping off point for the Pyrenees mountains was Collioure in France on the Mediterranean coast, a beautiful former fishing port, now a picturesque tourist town. After departing Collioure we were in Spain within a couple of hours, the border, on a minor road, being completely unmarked. Just the change in tarmac and style of road signs the only clue to stop saying "Bonjour" and start saying "Hola". We spent 10 days heading west on as many unsealed tracks as possible. I think we did somewhere between 600-700km off road (around 400 miles) and maybe 500km (300 miles) on tarmac in those 10 days. It feels great to let a bit of air out of the tyres, get the diff lock engaged, this is what we came for. We drove and camped at a new place every day, often driving the whole day without seeing anyone else on the trails except the occasional farmer of shepherd. Tremendous wildlife to see, especially birds, with Vultures and Eagles an almost constant sight. We didn't make any advance plans for where we would camp, we just drove until mid afternoon most days and then used Google and the list of sites in the Vibraction book to see where we could reach within two or three hours. The Spanish campsites were very quiet, no worries about getting a spot.
The tracks across the pyrenees were mostly hard gravel and could be done in most SUVs, but there are enough stretches that are little used or heavily washed out which required some care and necessitate a "proper" 4x4. I would say the route was challenging enough to keep it interesting, but not so that you worried about being a lone vehicle. No need for big lifts or 35 inch tyres. The very dry and hot weather meant that all-terrains were more than adequate. The Defender ran almost perfectly the whole trip, the only issue being a loss of power in the very high heat on very steep switchback roads. I'll put this down to the unusual ambient temps, high load situation and a reasonable amount of weight on board. As soon as we were out of the 40s it never happened again. Might need to think about a bigger radiator.
Before this trip, I wondered whether it wouldn't feel much like overlanding, as we would never be more than a few hours from a large town or city, and maybe never less than hour form a sealed road. It’s also a well travelled route amongst overlanders. But this part of Spain almost feels abandoned, with very few folk about and even numerous actual abandoned villages. We only saw two small groups of recreational 4x4s the whole time we were on the tracks. So there was a sense of adventure and remoteness after all, even a bit eerie in places, even though to an extent that is an illusion.
After 20 days in Spain we crossed the Pyrenees, south to north, back across another completely unmarked border into St Jean Pied de Port in France. I have to say I had a real feeling of deflation that there were no more tracks to do on this trip and that we would shortly be heading north towards home. Does anyone else get that when the trails are done and it's time to head home? We completed the final bit of the coast to coast trek on tarmac to St Jean de Luz on the Atlantic Coast. We have some relatives in San Sebastian, and they drove up to meet us. The long drive north followed a week's R&R in a French gite on a farm near Dax, which in all honesty felt a bit dull after days of moving from one place to another. On leaving the gite, we inadvertently chose to drive most of the way up France on Bastille Day, not a wise decision with horrendous traffic the whole day, but at least we weren’t heading south, that looked even worse. Luckily, we had the option to break the journey and take an extra day’s rest at my Wife’s Parent’s cottage in Normandy before getting on the Eurotunnel back to the UK after 22 days away. I didn’t record the toal trip mileage but it will have been somewhere around 3000 miles.
I’ve attached a few photos that I hope you can see. Next stop Morocco, it can’t come soon enough!
Route planning and navigation was done using a combination of tools. For the road sections, we used Google Maps and the TomTom Go Android app on a tablet. For the off-road sections, we bought a Vibraction road book (which also came with .gpx tracks), a Michelin paper map of North East Spain and the Locus Maps Pro app on the tablet. Using the tulip diagrams in the Vibraction book was great fun, to the point where I would love to do a trip using those and trip meter alone in the future.
We left home in Lancashire, England on the 22nd June and got into France via the Eurotunnel. It's by far the best way to get to mainland Europe in my experience, quick and no chance of sea sickness! This is before the main summer holidays in Europe, so the roads and campsite were quiet the whole time we were travelling. We stuck to the Autoroutes in France to get the miles out of the way with a couple of nights each camping in Epernay in the Champagne region (which we last visited a decade earlier on our honeymoon) and in the Tarn Gorge to break up the journey. In hindsight, this was too lazy a pace and I wish we had pushed on to have more time in the Pyrenees. The Landy doesn't enjoy these high speed roads and she lets us know it, too noisy to try to blast along at the 80mph limit, so it is policy to set the cruise control at 60 mph and sit in the right lane with the trucks. The lower speed helps a lot with the range to, getting about 420 miles between fill ups.
Our jumping off point for the Pyrenees mountains was Collioure in France on the Mediterranean coast, a beautiful former fishing port, now a picturesque tourist town. After departing Collioure we were in Spain within a couple of hours, the border, on a minor road, being completely unmarked. Just the change in tarmac and style of road signs the only clue to stop saying "Bonjour" and start saying "Hola". We spent 10 days heading west on as many unsealed tracks as possible. I think we did somewhere between 600-700km off road (around 400 miles) and maybe 500km (300 miles) on tarmac in those 10 days. It feels great to let a bit of air out of the tyres, get the diff lock engaged, this is what we came for. We drove and camped at a new place every day, often driving the whole day without seeing anyone else on the trails except the occasional farmer of shepherd. Tremendous wildlife to see, especially birds, with Vultures and Eagles an almost constant sight. We didn't make any advance plans for where we would camp, we just drove until mid afternoon most days and then used Google and the list of sites in the Vibraction book to see where we could reach within two or three hours. The Spanish campsites were very quiet, no worries about getting a spot.
The tracks across the pyrenees were mostly hard gravel and could be done in most SUVs, but there are enough stretches that are little used or heavily washed out which required some care and necessitate a "proper" 4x4. I would say the route was challenging enough to keep it interesting, but not so that you worried about being a lone vehicle. No need for big lifts or 35 inch tyres. The very dry and hot weather meant that all-terrains were more than adequate. The Defender ran almost perfectly the whole trip, the only issue being a loss of power in the very high heat on very steep switchback roads. I'll put this down to the unusual ambient temps, high load situation and a reasonable amount of weight on board. As soon as we were out of the 40s it never happened again. Might need to think about a bigger radiator.
Before this trip, I wondered whether it wouldn't feel much like overlanding, as we would never be more than a few hours from a large town or city, and maybe never less than hour form a sealed road. It’s also a well travelled route amongst overlanders. But this part of Spain almost feels abandoned, with very few folk about and even numerous actual abandoned villages. We only saw two small groups of recreational 4x4s the whole time we were on the tracks. So there was a sense of adventure and remoteness after all, even a bit eerie in places, even though to an extent that is an illusion.
After 20 days in Spain we crossed the Pyrenees, south to north, back across another completely unmarked border into St Jean Pied de Port in France. I have to say I had a real feeling of deflation that there were no more tracks to do on this trip and that we would shortly be heading north towards home. Does anyone else get that when the trails are done and it's time to head home? We completed the final bit of the coast to coast trek on tarmac to St Jean de Luz on the Atlantic Coast. We have some relatives in San Sebastian, and they drove up to meet us. The long drive north followed a week's R&R in a French gite on a farm near Dax, which in all honesty felt a bit dull after days of moving from one place to another. On leaving the gite, we inadvertently chose to drive most of the way up France on Bastille Day, not a wise decision with horrendous traffic the whole day, but at least we weren’t heading south, that looked even worse. Luckily, we had the option to break the journey and take an extra day’s rest at my Wife’s Parent’s cottage in Normandy before getting on the Eurotunnel back to the UK after 22 days away. I didn’t record the toal trip mileage but it will have been somewhere around 3000 miles.
I’ve attached a few photos that I hope you can see. Next stop Morocco, it can’t come soon enough!
