Sunday 24th was a quiet day. Apart from the random gunshots echoing around the valley, care of Ceret's enthusiastic boar hunters, the town was very quiet. In fact, it often amazes us how quiet town can be, even though we live in the absolute centre and between pedestrian squares.
However, one of the pleasures of waking up earlyish is to enjoy the smell of freshly baked bread wafting in the window from one of the nearby bakers. At 4:30am or 6am, we know the day has already started for some. We made a slow start to the day, however, eventually getting ourselves on a walk on the back loop (Le Ventous) on the edge of town. Given it is a hunting day (Sundays, Saturdays and Wednesdays) we didn't venture into the hinterland, and put on bright caps and T-shirts just to be extra cautious. We don't trust French men bearing arms at all.
Part of this walk takes us past the Couvent de Capucins (Capuchin Nuns Convent). We looked at buying this when it was up for sale sometime before Covid. The property included a chapel, residential building, large grounds, statues, buried water source, overgrown gardens and even a large cross. It was a divine property, no pun intended, and would have been a fabulous DIY project. However, outweighing its wonderful character and location (just above town), the cost of the renovation would have been huge, plus there would likely have been constraints on what we could do given its historical listing. We even went into Perpignan to discuss it with the national organisation responsible for heritage protection. Alas, it was not to be.
In the end the property was bought by an English couple and they have spent the last four or so years working on it, including installing a new roof on both the house and chapel. On our walk today we spied they have managed to open up a few walls and put in large new windows. It really is a wonderful complex but we knew that the venture was just too costly for us.
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| Looking down on the convent, with the chapel to the left. |
Monday was a much more energetic day, and it was a whole heap of fun. September is generally the time that wild blackberries are ripe for the harvesting. During this month we typically take a plastic bag with us on our walks close to town, or failing that use a cap, so we can crop any berries not yet discovered by locals. However, on 2-3 occasions we have driven up to a refuge close to the French/Spanish border, from where a number of decent walks explore the Pyrenees. One of these tracks is bordered by rampant blackberry vines. Given we arrived here in Ceret late in September this year, we figured that there might still be some ripe berries up at altitude.
Hence, we set off in our trusty little car to scale the hairpin bends up to the refuge, high above Le Perthus on the border. The initial walk is through forest, until you get up onto the ridgeline. It's a steep walk up, and hence a steep one back down again.
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| Forest track |
Fairly much as soon as we started to get out of the forest we came across some decent crops of berries, and indeed spent over an hour cropping away as we slowly trekked uphill. It was hot work, and the berries were unusually small but still ready for picking. When we reached the plateau at the top we hid our bags of berries behind a bush and kept walking. It was pretty cool to be walking along the ridge of the Pyrenees, on the very border of Spain and France. The border here is basically a ragged fence of post and wire. The view from the top was brilliant, with not a cloud in the sky.
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| View looking towards France over the plains of Rousillon. The coast is on the RHS. |
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| View south over Spain |
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| Forested plateau |
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| French/Spanish border is a post and wire fence along the middle of the grassed ridge |
After climbing over the border into Spain the track soon weaves past an ancient snow-well. The cave was made centuries ago by local men who dug a huge hole, then lined it with rocks. It is 10m in depth and 5m wide. with what initially looks like a small stone hut is the entrance to a tunnel linking with a circular chamber below the dome. It functioned by snow being shovelled in at the top in winter and extracted from the bottom in summer. It was a refrigerator, and still worked perfectly 400 years after it was constructed.
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| The dome at the top of the snow chamber |
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| Snow was extracted at the base via a tunnel chute |
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| Carefully crafted rock walls lining the inside of the snow chamber |
We could crawl inside the chute to look into the chamber. We'd be in there before so knew what to expect, but it's still a little scary to crawl along a narrow tunnel using just light by the mobile phone. There is no barrier at the end, and a sudden drop-off down to the bottom of the chamber would be very jarring. We didn't see any bones though, thankfully!
On other occasions we've walked further along the track, doing the entire loop up the cell-tower and then back down to the plateau. This time we were feeling rather weary, time had marched on with all our berry picking and we were also looking forward to rewarding ourselves by having a lunch in Spain. We therefore opted to take a shortcut back, collected our hidden bags of berries and head back to the car. It was a very hot day, over 30 degrees, and we were at an altitude of 1200m.
A quick trip downhill, through the French border town of Le Perthus and we were into the Spanish town of La Jonquera. This is a favourite place for us, for getting haircuts, stocking up on groceries and also having a meal - all at significantly less cost than in France. At 2pm we arrived at the local restaurant we hoped to try out to find it pretty full. Many Spanish don't eat lunch until 3pm, but, talking with the proprietor a little later, he told us that 90% of his customers are French. We found a table inside, and it was nice to be out of the heat.
The meal was superb. We both opted for fish entrees and mains, and it didn't disappoint in any way. In fact, we are very keen to return there when the opportunity arises. We ended up chatting a little to the couple who we presumed were husband and wife and the owners. It was fun, and when John said 'please' in Catalan, when ordering his dessert, the guy beamed hugely and roared with laughter (we don't think it was at the pronunciation?). He was really thrilled and was very chatty They were a lovely couple and we got along well in a mixture of French and Spanish and a hint of Catalan and English.
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| Entrees - fresh anchovies for me and chipirones (squid/small cuttlefish) for John |
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| Mains - cabillaud (cod) for me and seiches (cuttlefish) for John |
It all made for a splendid and filling lunch. Well restored from our morning's endeavours, we made a quick stop at one of the ginormous supermarkets that line the main road at the frontier here, and bought a few necessities before heading back over the border.
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| Spanish essentials - liqueur, Spanish sauvignon/verdejo, Perelada Cava, 0% beer,broad corn nibbles, Spanish cheese and allioli |
