Mountains to the Med

To get to the Mediterranean coast, we had to drive through the mountains - very close to Andorra. We drove up to the Col de Puymorens in really heavy fog - you sometimes couldn't see more than about 6 feet ahead. Given the sheer drops, that may not have been a bad thing! Some pretty close calls too - some of the trucks didn't seem that bothered about coming full speed towards us, well over the centre line.

En route, we stopped to take a look at the Four Solaire, a power station that does it all with mirrors and the sun - how novel is that!

Emerging from the mists and fog, we made a stop at Villefranche-de-Conflent, a well-preserved medieval city within ramparts and looked (from a distance) at Fort Libéria.

We hit the Mediterranean coast and stopped at Collioure, not far from the Spanish border. You hear lots of Spanish being spoken there and the French is heavily accented. It's a picturesque place, vines growing down the hillsides right down to the town, and was pretty busy - lots of British accents - and the place is totally geared to tourism. The town's dominated by a massive fortress established by the Templars in the 13th century. The day we were there, there was going to be some kind of Basque festival for St. Jean and every beach had a pyre ready to be torched.

Further north, not far from Montpellier, is Sète, a busy fishing port. Apparently freighters carry French sunflower and rapeseed oil from there all over the world. You see gigantic tankers of Algerian natural gas (if one ever goes off, it will take the whole town with it) and Algerian wine (marginally less dangerous).

Narbonne's a nice spot, with a massive (unfinished) cathedral and Archbishop's Palace. In the main square, there's a recently-discovered section of the Roman Via Domitia. It looks pretty rough - can't have been much fun marching over it or driving carts with wooden wheels. One thing I did notice in Narbonne was that even though it was lunchtime in a big city, we didn't see anyone in business clothes - maybe casual Fridays have taken off there as well.

The covered market was nice and colorful - lots of local fresh produce.