There are always worse ways to spend your time…
By Sunday morning, I had at least 30 itchy bites all over me and that’s the trouble with etangs and rivers, they seem to encourage bitey things to take up residence. It was also incredibly hot and we either needed some sea breezes, or a bit of mountain air. “We’ll head south”, said Rodney. But we’ve just made it into France?! So we headed back the way we came, that is, after a wild goose chase trying to find a supermarket open on a Sunday in a major town in France. We were very low on supplies and really needed to stock up, so I did the sensible thing of checking the world wide web to see if there was a Carrefour open anywhere. Yes! Seven days a week, brilliant! But on arrival it obviously wasn’t open and the big sign outside said ‘Monday to Saturday; in French of course. Only the petrol pumps were open on a Sunday and we didn’t need fuel. We finally did find a rather miserable Casino, a.k.a. a supermarket, and managed to stock up on most of what we needed. Before we reached Perpignon, we turned east through St Hippolyte. Now whenever I see that saint’s name, I always recall saying on our first year of travelling in Europe “If I ever have a son, I shall call him Hippolyte”. For some reason it has always struck me as a very silly name and also, hippos are never light.
We followed the edge of the Mediterranean through many coastal towns until we reached Collioure. So many folk have recommended it to us that we needed to check it out. To begin our stay, we missed the turning to the campsite, so drove on into town. It did impress us, so we turned around and followed the signs to Camping Les Amandiers. It’s a tightly packed little campsite and the first couple we met had just scraped their caravan trying to get in. Each pitch is less than half the size of our last campsite. There’s no bathroom of our own anymore, we’re now dealing with a grotty, old, unisex set-up. And there’s still no sea breeze. So we did what all our German, French, Dutch, Scottish and Kiwi neighbours were doing, sweltering in the shade. Maybe the mountain air would have been sweeter. It was nearly five o’clock by the time we peeled ourselves off our sticky deckchairs and wandered down the creek to the ‘beach’. This was no Bondi Beach, more of a small cove of builder’s rubble and yet covered in people. This time last year, we had stunning Portuguese beaches all to ourselves. Never mind. We trudged up the path at the far end, up over the cliff and then followed the road down in to Collioure.
It is a picturesque place with a very distinctive layout. At one end there’s the massive Fort Miradou still in use by the military, a rocky outcrop with a chapel and a lighthouse, the Cháteau Royal sits in the middle of the bay, a large church with the strangest of detached towers at one end, a fort high up on the hill behind an old windmill, a number of breakwaters and five beaches scattered amongst it all. There’s a house that looks like a small castle and the old quarter of Le Mouré is a maze of houses painted in a variety of colours and most surprising of all, was that most of the shops and cafes were actually open and buzzing with visitors. We had a good mooch around, and could see why so many artists, such as Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and André Derain, came here in the early 20thC; there are so many different spots that can make a good picture.
It was another tough sweaty walk back, this time via the main road, and we spent the rest of the evening trying to cool Eileen down, so that we might get a good night’s sleep. On our second day in Collioure we strode the road route in to town, then, with a map in hand, we followed the edge of the harbour on the artists trail, the ‘Chemin Du Fauvism’. At certain viewpoints, a copy of an artist’s picture is placed at the spot at which it was painted. A little has changed, but not a lot. Collioure seems to be a very multi-faceted place; there are so many different vistas and scenes and the light of the morning picks out the colours in a different way from the afternoon.
We stopped for a cold drink in Les Templiers, a café restaurant that has walls absolutely covered in paintings and a bar that looks like half a boat with a mermaid figurehead; apparently the place has always been a popular hangout for artists.
After walking to the far side of the bay and back, out to the lighthouse and round lots of backstreets, we were ready for prawns, fish and frites at Le Copacabana on the Rue Camille Pelletan set on the edge of the harbour. Even with ice creams in hand, the sweltering walk back over the hill to the campsite made it easy to decide that a swim was definitely next on today’s agenda. It was 34°C inside Eileen, so we pulled on our swimmers and plodded down to the ‘builder’s yard’ beach of Plage de l’Oriulle. Just as we stepped into the water a flash of lightening and a long low rumble of thunder signalled an approaching storm. But we had to have a swim, even if the water was only 19°C, so we gingerly crept in to cool our overheated bodies and my itchy bites. I won’t say it was heaven, absolutely not heaven, but it definitely felt good. We managed to dry off a bit with our towels laid out on the hot rocks and pebbles, but as the sky got darker and the wind blew, it was definitely time to leave. The thunder became a constant rumble and the temperatures dropped considerably, so we opened up every door, cupboard, window and hatch in Eileen and then sat outside watching the lightening illuminating the pages of our books. Half an hour later, drips of rain started to drop and then it got heavier, the thunder got louder and we started closing Eileen down again. This had been a journey of near perfect weather for the last six weeks, but finally the spell has been broken.
