Nature is great. Beautiful scenery, fresh air, peace and quiet.

But sometimes it can all be a bit too much, can’t it? Sometimes you’ll be out walking in the mountains, listening to the distant songs of birds up in the trees, and suddenly you’ll have a longing to be on a busy shopping street somewhere, full of people. You’ll dream of being amongst shoppers darting from one store to the next. All of them looking for a bargain. Right?

No, me neither. But this weekend I went to Andorra for the first time, and I can only imagine that someone in charge there must have felt like that once.

Because Andorra is a bit strange. It almost feels like a refuge from nature. The tiny country is full of mountainous beauty, with glorious nature all around you. And yet it seems to be in the background. Secondary to the allure of sales.

If you look up from the main shopping street, you’ll see a mountain looming down at you from the end of it. From what I could tell, however, not many people were paying attention to the mountains. There were too many offers to be had. Andorra is famous for having a much lower rate of VAT than either of its big neighbours, France or Spain. For that reason lots of things are cheaper there. Especially booze and cigarettes. But there are all kinds of shops in Andorra, and they all seemed to be doing a roaring trade at the weekend.

Maybe as yesterday was a bank holiday in Spain (yes, another one), and most people had Monday off work too, the weekend was particularly busy. Even so, a lot of the shoppers I saw reminded me of the people who leave their Christmas shopping far too late. The ones who sneak out late afternoon on Christmas Eve. A desperate look in their eyes.

In a supermarket I saw bottles of booze dangling precariously from fingertips. No time to get a basket. One man near me picked up a bottle of whiskey and, upon studying the price a second time, grabbed another two bottles. Why not, my good man?

As Andorra is such a small country, there’s only really one main road that runs all the way through it. For the majority of its visitors, this road is Andorra. They won’t veer off it. Rather they’ll follow it past about 100 more petrol stations than you would expect to find.

Basically there are two entrances/exits to the country. One is at the Spanish border, and another is at the French border. So people from both countries tend to converge on the main town – Andorra la Vella – for a few hours of frenzied shopping, before turning back and heading home.

It’s like they’re funnelled in and out. Mountains either side of them.

As I sat in a queue on the way back to the Spanish border, processing my thoughts about the place, I glanced down at the shopping bag between my legs. I’d bought a coat in one of the hundreds of shops on Avinguda Meritxell. I realised then that I was no different from the others.

I was like the guy reaching for another couple of whiskey bottles in the supermarket. Andorra had seen us coming a mile off, had taken our money, and was now quietly ushering us out the back door.

As we crawled toward the checkpoint, I opened the window, took a long, deep breath of mountain air, stared at the golden, autumnal trees of the Pyrenees and smiled.

Nature is great, I thought.