Roussillon

Chestnut Bark

Peyrepertuse Castle from below

Peyrepertuse

Peyrepertuse

Cucugnan

Triple clangers

Charles Rennie Mackintosh plaque in Port Vendres

Port Vendres

Vermeille

Collioure

Collioure from coastal path

Ceret

Castlenou

Serrabona Priory

Roca Roja

Villefranche de Conflient

Abbey St Martin du Canigou

Orgues d'Ille sur-Tet

Orgues d'Ille sur-Tet

Corbere, at lunch with the Mairie staff and Chef

On another cool windy day, we set off for our next destination and took the D117 southeast from Leran in the Ariege. We passed through some remarkable landscapes; oak and chestnut forests until Quillan and then threading through the deep gorge of the Aude River before emerging on the open plains into the heart of the Roussillon wine-growing region at Maury.

We made a detour to Perypetreuse castle, one of the most impressive Cathar castles which served as a border fort on the boundary between France and Aragon for four centuries. It was a steep climb to the rock precipice upon which it was built by the Kings of Aragon but the reward included views of the Mediterranean coast and of Queribus castle on the next ridge. After a drink at the nearby village of Cucugnan, we set off on a typical adventure over back roads. We traversed over ridges, through forests and sleepy hamlets and finally freewheeled down to Ile sur-Tet as the fuel in the car ran out. I had estimated that the journey would be 45 kilometres but it turned out to be 80 kilometres along twisting roads.

We stayed three nights near Thuirs in the heart of the fertile Tet Valley, a place where peach trees and vines vie for soil on the valley floor and the sun shines most of the year. A drive through Roussillon on the first day took us to Port Vendres on the Cote Vermeille, home to many artists including Charles Rennie Mackintosh who spent 4 years there. It is a working port busy with cruise ships and large yachts seeking a safe harbour from the huge seas that the wind was driving across the Mediterranean Sea. We pottered back along the coast stopping at the tourist hotspot of Collioure, which had too many fast food and tourism shops to retain any intrinsic charm. Unlike the quite stunning inland town of Ceret with its shady squares where Picasso, Matisse and other artists had hung out and which retains a dignity denied by most coastal towns.

Thuirs was well placed for excursions and the next day we wandered up to the nearby village of Castelnou on market day, the stalls of local produce came complete with a live jazz band. We continued on to the Priory at Serrabona, set on a serene hillside at 600 metres. I climbed the two adjacent hills as the summer heat began to filter back into Roussillon and watched some large raptors gliding along the ridges searching for prey. At last, it was warm enough to swim and we whiled away the early evening at the hotel before eating in and sampling the local wine.

The trip to the Pyrenees the next day was again truncated, the mountains were in clouds but lower down we visited Villefranche de Conflent, another of the Plus Beau Villages de France and then St Martin Abbey below the massive Cannigou Mountain. In the late afternoon, we drove to the hill town of Eus, another Plus Beau village for a lazy drink in the cafe. Our final day was taken by a visit to the nearby Orgues d"Ille sur-Tet, a mini version of Bryce Canyon. We sampled the local peaches before stopping at Corbere for lunch. The staff of the Mairie were eating there in what seemed a generous lunch hour and we joined them for a chat. They told us it was a Catalan community of great conviviality and this was proved when the Chef de bureau arrived and ordered a bottle of sparkling wine.

We left Roussillon the next morning with the impression of a very fertile area, rich in local produce, beautiful villages, good food and a strong Catalan culture. The Pyrenees had unfortunately remained in the cloud until the day we left but that could be a good excuse to return.