Seeing Ski Resorts in Andorra & France

February 7^th, 2026

The weather didn’t turn out to be as bad as predicted, but I still woke up to low, grey clouds and a bit of rain in Andorra la Vella.  I decided to have a driving day and get into southern France as I’m still hoping to cover a fair amount of ground before returning to England in 11 days.

 

The morning that I woke up to...not overly inspiring.

Starting to head out of the capital.  There's a gondola for a ski resort going up and over that mountain along the snowline you can see from the middle of the mountain above the buildings up and to the right.

Just outside of Andorra la Vella.

I knew that Andorra has a few ski resorts, and since there aren’t many roads in this country, it wasn’t surprising that I would pass by a few.  Being a Saturday, which turned into a sunny day, there were many foreigners and locals getting out to shred.

A couple of ski runs.

Looking back from where I came from.

What a beautiful day!

The Granvilira Ski Resort, named after the Gran Valira River that runs through the capital.

I thought this was interesting...a gas station right at the top of the pass.  The ski resort is on both faces of the mountain.

The big, treeless bowls of Granlavira.

Starting down from the pass.

That's a lot of skiable terrain!  You can see the chairlift going up the middle of the photo.

The resort is behind me now.

Within an hour I was at the border and passed by a few other resorts in France.  

The French border, which was unmanned.

Bonjour France!

There's another ski resort, French this time, on the right.

That looks pretty nice.

Then it was a long, curvy road that followed a river with steep rock walls on either side.  It was at least 45 minutes of driving through this canyon in the shade of the sun.  Unfortunately, Octi’s fan for heat is either not blowing much (on settings 1, 2 & 3), or blasting while making a loud noise on setting 4…so I was getting a bit chilly by the time I drove into some sunlight!

I don't know the name of this gorge, but it was a welcomed surprise.  Unfortunately, my phone didn't focus properly.

Nice natural tunnel.

I arrived at my camp spot by a small river in Esperaza (sounds more like a Spanish town than a French one) in the late afternoon.  It was just a driving day, but a nice one.  I sure was a bit jealous of those people hitting the slopes though!