by the sea

We sit at the café bar on the square and watch the people arrive. No one drives to market. You walk. With your bag or basket. And you stop to talk to anyone you know.





Or, you ignore the marke (for now) and you have your conversation at the café bar. It’s 10:30. As I slurp my lovely café crème, others are enjoying a morning aperitif.





It’s a beautiful market Friday in Sorede.

I have learned that a Tuesday market is small, as if you’re still recovering from an orgy of week-end eating, but a Friday market is small times two. I hadn’t been thinking of doing another market-based supper, but there are too many wonderful foods out there, including the new, Friday arrivals – the sausage man (I buy the one with cumin) and the charming cheese lady (the runny goat cheese is like no other).









It is impossible to pass by the haricots verts (a string bean so perfect, ballads should be sung in its honor): a fistful please! And the young potatoes, and the delicate rippling leaves of a very young spinach, and the endive. And a half dozen tomatoes. A French salad in the making. Oh, and we may as well get those delicious carrots, and some fresh figs. What?? The grand total is less than 3 Euros?? And you throw in free sprigs of parsley for anyone who asks? Produce here is very very inexpensive.


The clouds are clinging to the mountains today, but that is of no concern to us. I have in mind a beach day. Not the beaches just ten minutes east of here. I want a lovely Mediterranean beach with pristine waters that are shallow and clear. I want golden sands and no beachfront development or distraction. For that, we have to travel. Some fifty or sixty kilometers north, there is the beautiful beach of La Franqui. Please don’t share this tip with too many friends. The place is too gorgeous, too precious. May it stay this way for next decade or longer.





It is actually two beaches – one, the smaller of the two, is accessible from the little village. Do you see the river separating the two?





It's an inlet, streaming into an etang – a rather large lagoon. The second, longer beach is accessible by a bridge some ways out of town. (Or you can hold up your skirts and cross the river on foot.) We find the road over the bridge and park where it dead ends. From here, it's just a short stroll to the second beach.

There is a sailing school here as well and school children are finishing a lesson as we arrive. I comment to Ed that kids learn early here the importance of good recreation.





We walk a short distance along the wide strip of sand by the water. The air is warm, the skies are blue and puffy white and there is quite a breeze! This comes as no surprise. The winds cavort from beyond the hills, across the great Roussillon plain. There are a number of turbines on the hills catching the energy of that blast of good air and there are a number of windsurfers that come to La Franqui to race across the sea on boards with sails and kites.

Watching them is an afternoon’s worth of fun.





But first, we choose a spot far up the beach, away from the village, away from pretty much anything and anyone.

Ed is in the water within seconds. And it is such a fine place to play! Shallow for a great long while. Look – there he is, a tiny dot, standing waist deep. You can see the pale colors of the sand through the azure waters of the sea.





Water that encourages joyful silliness.





I follow shortly after and spend a heavenly long time practicing the art of crawling.






From the water, the view is equally dazzling. Whichever way you look.





On the sand again, we dry off. Gusts of wind spray us occasionally with fine sand, easily brushed off. Ed has explained to me numerous times how wind does not mean there'll be waves and indeed, there are no waves here at all. My traveling buddy builds a sand fort just at the water’s edge and it is a long long time before a little slap of water brings it to ruins.





Still, the gliders and surfers back near the village are having the most glorious time working the breeze to their advantage.

We walk in their direction to watch some more.





Crossing the lagoon inlet, we are now on the town beach and the town beach has, of course, a café bar where any number of people are refreshing themselves with a spot of something.





I choose ice cream. Dark chocolate paired with the local apricot never tasted so good.


It’s seven before we’re back in Sorede again. I know this for a fact because Ed wanted to catch the boulangerie before it closed at 7 – he thought a flan would be a fine ending to our market supper. It was not to be. The bread store was closed, even as our local grocer still was keeping the doors open for those last minute purchases – eggs for me (hard boiled, but not too hard – a splendid addition to the beans and potatoes and tomatoes. With mustard and vinegar made from Banyuls grapes and olive oil of course.)

Outside the shop, artichoke flowers were on display. I have seen (and loved) artichoke fields up north, but I had never seen the flower bloom (we harvest and eat the early bud).





We eat on the patio again. It begins to rain lightly halfway through supper, but neither of us wants to go in and so we continue, though I ask Ed to to hide the baguette. Damp French bread is not as good as a crispy loaf.

sounds like a French butterfly, or pepper and a filet mignon

For a change of pace, on Thursday, we went to Perpignan. It’s the capital of the Pyrenees-Orientales Department, which perhaps doesn’t tell you much until you realize that there are 95 departments in France (further grouped into 22 regions and the Pyrenees-Orientales belongs to the Languedoc-Roussillon region) and so perhaps being a capital may not mean that it is large.

In fact, Perpignan is about the size of Madison: the city proper has maybe 120,000 people and the larger metro area has around 300,000.





It feels significantly more urban than Madison. And, of course, it’s been around for a while (historians place its birth somewhere in the tenth century).





I admit, I wanted a city moment. And a bigger market.

And I did get both, though the market was still of medium proportions. And that's hardly surprising given that Perpignan has many outdoor markets, some daily, some four days a week, some on select days. It's a challenge to keep this straight. In any case, the old town market was the most atmospheric, if a bit on the medium small size.




Being the tourist that I am, I wanted to see the old town. And so we stayed within city center and satisfied ourselves with the food stalls and food shops around the Place de la Republique.

















We basked in the loveliness of the old square...





...we shopped for dinner foods, and admired shop windows (here, I must admit I did the admiring and Ed kept the patient demeanor of a person who will be happy when his traveling companion is done with store gazing), and toward the end, were tempted beyond belief by the fresh oysters sold at this place..





... and wanting to reward my occasional traveling companion for his good cheer, I treated him, but really us to a plateful of wonderful, buttery Bretagne oysters.





And then we drove home. Happy as anything to be in the village again, where a dad puts his arm on his daughter’s shoulder, and an older couple takes an evening stroll with their dog, and our neighbor hauls in the best apricots ever.













Later, we ate our market riches on our patio. The bread was from Parpignan, for a change, but the pastries were from Sorede's bigger bakery.

to life, along the carrot trails

If I thought I was to see red-haired children only on Irish soil, I was wrong.





We have just picked up our breakfast at the bakery (and it being rather late in the morning, the pain us chocloat is sold out; we have to settle for these – I love the pruneaux one, Ed prefers nature)...





...and are heading for an outside table at the village café bar so that I can have a satisfying café crème (which isn’t cream at all, but a milky espresso, though less milky than an American latte) along with the purchased baked goods and there they are, French speaking carrot tops.

I thought at first they were British transplants. The Languedoc region of France, demographically speaking, is on the upswing. The cities here are some of the fastest growing in Europe, in large part because of the invasion from the north, including from the British Isles. But no, these two have French grandparents. The immigrant theory is put to rest.


The late breakfast notwithstanding, we are ambitious today. We think we can do a hike to the highest of the peaks in this group of mountains – rising close to 4500 feet just above our village. (The Pyrenees further west of us are higher at around 10,000 feet; but we’re loath to get in the car at all given that we have trails just steps away.)

There are some puffy clouds near the summit, but the day seems otherwise perfect: sun dappled and not too hot. We have water, we have good shoes. We can start in the village square and continue along the road for just a wee bit, picking up the path to the summit just as we leave Sorede. Estimated hiking time to the top: 4 hours.

It’s not quite noon. Most people are thinking lunch thoughts. We head out.

Perhaps you expect me to write that we couldn’t find the trailhead? Not at all. We have no problem finding it, just at the side of a bench, as the book tells us. But, keeping to the trail is another matter. We lose it ten minutes into our hike.

We read that there are cows and donkeys roaming these mountains. Cow country means that there will be cow tracks. Misleading trails that take you the wrong way very quickly. We return to the last seen trail marker (a slash of yellow on a tree or a stone) again and again and get nowhere.

Discouraged, we take what must be a logging road and generally meander in an upward direction. We are one hour into a nothing hike. The views are pretty, but the summits are elusive.





But as we leave behind the farms and cherry trees and follow the logging road into the forest, we find another trail – a bright carrot orange this time, heading upwards into the woods.

Why not. A trail is a trail. Our pamphlet on hiking in this region has gotten us nowhere at all, but here we have a real slab of real orange paint and it heads up. Take it! A mountain is a mountain! (To this moment, we are not absolutely sure which mountain we hiked, though most certainly it was not the highest of the lot.)





It’s a rugged climb. The worthless book does mention that these hikes are radonnee sportive and so we are not surprised, but still, there are fallen branches to navigate and bramble to push out of the way. Wearing short pants feels pleasantly cool, but the legs definitely get whipped around today.





This time, the markings are good. When we lose the path, we are quick to find it again. At several intersecting points we are joined by another trail, but we stay with orange (which becomes brighter and redder further up; perhaps imitating a different varietal of carrot) and it does not fail us.

The hike is 100 % through a Mediterranean forest. The breeze is lost here, among the thicket. The buzz of flies leaves me feeling that we are in the dead of summer.





I can’t say that it’s a uniformly beautiful hike. It's not that the forest is uninteresting. Often times we see vegetation that is unique and quite thrilling to navigate. And every now and then, the path opens up to a comfortably wide track. You breathe a sigh of relief then. For a few minutes you convince yourself that you wont get lost.













But then it narrows and becomes more remote. And since this is the forest, we lack the views you come to appreciate on long mountain hikes. At one point there is a break in the trees and the view is quite pleasing, but a few paces further it disappears again behind the trees.





And now, three hours into the climb, we have come to the top.

But where are we? We know we are on a summit of sorts, or at least a ridge line. The trail appears to be heading down the other side, presumably to start up again at the next mountain. I’m not up for that. The markings are starting to confuse us again. A yellow paint stroke joins our path and then disappears. A lighter orange is back, along with our reddish carrot one. It’s easy to take a wrong turn. We build stone markers every time we have a choice of paths, but we could easily overlook these on our way back.

I suggest that this ridge be our summit for the day, even if it isn’t the one we originally set out to conquer.





We stop to eat lunch and it takes a while to find a space that hasn’t had many many cows there before us. Our baguette and cheese and tomato (and cherries for dessert) are delicious. The breeze is good up here and the flies, therefore, have blissfully dispersed. We are almost satisfied.

And after lunch, we are indeed satisfied, as we wonder along the ridge, off trail, and stumble across a cliff that clears the space for us and allows us the view that we’ve been missing.











Our return down the mountain is absolutely trouble free. As we emerge from the forest we see that the clouds are again playing with the mountains further west. Where we are, the skies are friendlier, with big patches of blue.





It is nearly six when we arrive back in the village.

I am half teasing when I ask – should we swim now? But Ed is enthusiastic about the idea.

We drive the ten minutes to Argiles sur Mer and turn a little south, to the tiny beach community of Le Racou.

It’s a small but quiet space of sand and blue water. At this evening hour, only the true beach lovers remain.













It’s too cool for me to swim, but Ed is utterly delighted. All that’s missing is a wave or two...- he tells me.

Calm waters. Me, I really like calm waters. I like it when hike trails continue without confusion, when the skies remain stable (we only had one bout of a dark cloud producing a two minute sprinkle), when the end of the day is capped by a good meal.

And so, I have to say, this day was a very very fine day indeed.

We stop at a pizza place where a guy is taking out lovely pizzas from a brick oven for customers who are wanting to eat at home. There are outside tables and we sit down at one. Slowly the place fills up. I order a tomato-mushroom-ham-emmental-oregano pizza and it is outstanding.





At the table next to ours, a group of French men and women are raising glasses in a toast. They accompany it with a short burst of song.

I can’t hear what it is they’re celebrating, but I’m thinking it’s probably life itself. I’ll join them. To life. And to the color orange.