"CANFRANC (AND THE STATION AT THE END OF THE WORLD)" Canfranc by terratrekker

I had really been in the french pyrenees for a week or so and on the last day I thought, yeah why not, I'll go and see spain!

Canfranc is the destination of a bus that travels from Oloron St Marie in France (south of Pau) to Canfranc. It was a 40 minute journey from southern end of the Valle d'aspe.
The rock changed colour to red on the spainish side.
We passed through a resort area. The cair was clear with from the first snow snaps.
Canfranc town is a bizzare place. I f you walk down south of where the bus stops, you will arrive at the main residential area of Canfranc. There is no town centre really, just a onsided strip of basic shops and one or two Tabacos. The residential buildings looked like something from a crumbling eastern european town, painted a decaying pink, 6 or 7 storeys high. Just past these desolate buildings was a huge enveloping tunnel with two directions, more spain, or back round to france.

Turning around back to town there is a slip road up to some 'older' buildings, from the 1930's maybe. A bit more attractive with green shutters. There is some great arty mystical graffitti, giant snails and suchlike. I had seen virtually no-one and the wind whipped town the one street. Then I passed the tiny park back near the bus. Some school children were waiting for their bus home as well. They shouted 'bonjour!' at me thinking i was french and buying up cheap foods at a tabacos, which is exactly what my bus driver seemed to be doing in the one hour turnaround time.
The riverside area was quite ok. nicely presented, as were the alpine style administration building with the spanish flag, next to a hotel. Presumably this place has thousands going through in ski seasons.
The shops were packed of allsorts of surreal souveniers of spain, even though we were about 10km inside. The shelves overflowed with oddities, an alladins cave of tat. So I bought myself an ashtray of the famous station ( i could have had a snow shaker, scale model the size of a brick or cuddly toys, but oh no). Its like having souveneirs of Milton keynes.
Which brings us nicely to the station. Its the centre ppiece of bizarrenes in this bizarre town from the edge. It is huge, was built with nazi gold, opened in the late 1920's and was meant to serve all of europe. It had hotels, resteraunts, marble stairs etc etc.
The place was built like an opera house.
It closed in the 1970's when it was only doing services to Pau, i think. (you can check on the net, do a google.its everywhere). basically it only ran to full capacity for a few years. Part of the problem was that the tracks on the spainish side where mostly a differnt size which was kind pf a problem. After a major accident it was basically shut down. The tunnels on the french side look bran new still. Most are overgrown. All very peculiar.
All in all I can definitley say that Canfranc is the strangerst town I have seen, so far.
I have some good pictures to see as well.