Adventure in Southern France

In spite of the heat we had a very active last two days around Cordes-Sur-Ciel. Sunday we went canoeing, a 10.5 km, 3 hour trip down the Tarn river. We were all quite tired by the end but there were 5 weirs to negotiate and plenty of rapids. I had Ollie and Sam for most of the trip, Em & Tan were in the other canoe. They managed some spectacular backwards traversing down the rapids. We were a little heavy at times for the more shallow rapids so I had to get out and push a few times.

Monday was even more adventure, this time at an amusement park. It was quite unbelievable for only 10 Euro each there was paintball, a high-ropes course, trampolines, bikes, roller blades, cable skiing, luge, zip line, dirt karts, dry slope skiing, water slides, swimming, chairlift and more. I have no idea how they can provide so much so cheaply but it was great fun.

The park is built in an old quarry with some activities at the top and others using the slope and then swimming and water skiing in the lake at the bottom. The zip line goes right across the whole site, you travel down at around 100km/h across the lake and then back to the middle where you hang until the line is pulled back up. Three people go at a time so Em, Sam & I did it together. It was all pretty relaxed until while we were dangling one of the carabina's that had been twisted straightened up. We heard a clunk and we only dropped about 2mm but it scared the daylights out of us.

Tuesday morning we left Cordes to drive to Spain. We were aiming to go through Andorra, a tiny slightly eccentric country between Spain & France (apparently they are still at war with Germany). I somehow didn't get the GPS right and we ended up taking a tunnel through the mountains and missed Andorra by millimetres. It was probably for the best though as the tunnel saved a lot of winding road through the Pyrenees mountains and Ollie had already been sick once.

We had to go to Tarrega before Salou to pick up our unit keys. Pep & Manela who we are doing our Spanish house swap with gave us a sample of Catalonian food while we were there. Very delicious, the kids loved the bread, it was coated with tomato, olive oil and salt. The Catalan Pizza was great as well.

South France Day 5-6