yellow trails and buoyant swallows

Every traversable mountain has a path to its summit. A trail, accessible for all. I take that as a given in France. In fact, most often, there’s more than one trail. You’ll find the Grand Routes that cross entire mountain ranges, but there are also the regional trails – yellow tags, a little less reliable, but pretty good. And then there are the local paths to consider. Marked orange, or red, or white and yellow – these often leave me confused, but they’re there for all to hike and so you can give them a go as well.

And so when the day dawns bright, with a splendid blue sky from one horizon to the next, I say – let’s head for the mountains.

Now, of course, that’s not a command for us to immediately get going. There’s still the mater of bread and pain au chocolat shopping. Here you'll see three women (one familiar) attending to their bread needs.



(photo by Ed)


Then there’s the morning café routine.

Okay, a little nap now, to chase away the warm noon hour. And now we’re ready. Where to? I know I want something fresh. Unexplored on a prior trip. And that’s not hard. We barely touched a handful of the summits last time. And we really didn’t consider the higher mountains away from the coast.

Still, the highest peaks are too long of a drive for spoiled types who regard anything more than an hour in the car as excessive. So I pick a place that is said to have a lovely village, about an hour from here, deeply into the mountains west of us. Prats de Mollo la Preste.

Typically, a local tourist office would offer information on trails, but I’ve gotten to understand that the tourist offices in these mountain villages are closed on Sundays. I know, I know, you do have to smile at that. Sometimes Saturday too.

No matter. There’ll be someone to show us trails.

Despite the brilliant sunshine over the Roussillon plane, there are scattered clouds up in the mountains. The Caginou – the most revered Catalan peek is barely visible through a misty haze, and then only for a few minutes.





We push forward anyway. Deep into the mountains, up a winding road that leads to the village of choice for the day.

It’s a different world up there: being this far from the coast makes the sea an irrelevant entity here (even as it is just a little over an hour away). Here, you feel the mountain air.

We ask at the café bar about local trails and they point us to one that goes up to the fort and beyond. A yellow tagged path. It’s 3 in the afternoon, there is a cloud cover to keep the air a touch cooler, but the visibility is splendid. Up we go.






Nearly straight up. Not many switchbacks. Through the forest, past beautiful alpine like pastures with an overabundance of flowers.
















I suggest a lunch break (we packed bread and cheese and water), but there isn’t the perfect spot. It has to have sun and shade, is has to have a good view. We hike on. Up up, and now we’re close to cattle farms.





More flies. Up higher we go and then, suddenly, before reaching any summit, or even a spot that offers expansive views, the trail ends.

Odd.

We follow one possible beaten down path. Nothing. A cow pasture. Lots of flies.

We follow another. We come across a dog. A territorial dog. Protecting something or other. Nice doggie. We’re leaving, doggie. Quit growling, doggie.

We’re about to give up. Call it a summit defeat. It happens. Local trails can do this to you. Someone neglected the final marks. We try one last uphill swing and my oh my, do we hit gold!

There is a clearing and most definitely a summit. The view to the east, south, west is as good as you could wish for.

To the east:





To the south:





To the west:





Or consider it as a composite:






Now that's a proper spot for lunch. It’s been several hours of a straight up haul and we’re ready for a break. And what a break it is. Call it a summit lunch.





One last look...





Time to turn back. Getting down is, of course, easier. We pass no other person on the trail, but there’s plenty of life around us. Sheep. There are the sheep.





And an enormous amount of butterflies.




Birds too, of course. Snails, the usual things that cross your path. Only sometimes you can hardly see the path as ferns and flowers spill over before your feet.





Down, straight down, reversing the trail, but with the different light, you get a fresh perspective on these hills and mountains.






Evening. We’re down in the village again. And it’s quite a charming place.





You have to think that in July and August there will be tourists, but now, on this Sunday evening, there are the occasional strollers and families and café people that you’ll see on any fine Sunday.





There are several fabric factories and shoe crafting businesses in the area – especially those specializing in Catalan espadrilles.





We poke around a little, then head home.

Back in Sorede, the evening is setting in. The pizza bar is nearly full, but we find a table at the edge. We half read, half listen to the conversations around us. The sangria comes...





...followed by our most favorite veggie pizzas.


 



The evening air here is warm. The clank of plates and silverware carries across the village square. High above them, there’s a swallow... and another, and another.

unstructured

Consider this: if you unwind too much, will your ability to put any structure to life diminish, or perhaps disappear altogether?

One down and one to go. I’m referring to weeks in Sorede. I know that we are halfway into our stay here because our hosts brought fresh towels today. We continue to be a handful for them, I think. Last night Gunter rushed down in his red shorts (they're his at home standbys) and knocked on our door the minute he saw us returning home from dinner. A lesson in prudence followed. We’re sloppy in locking up. He checked our car doors while we were gone – unlocked! Villages are changing, he tells us. Just up the road, the son of a neighbor, he may be up to no good. We should take greater care. Okay, we’ll try.

In the meantime, our rise up and get going hour continues to crawl upward. I wish I could say that it is only Ed who sleeps at odd hours. Or late hours. At 10 am I say – Ed, if we are to go to the Ceret market, we should get going already! (It’s a big happening in these parts: Ceret is about a half hour away and on Saturdays it has the market of markets in Languedoc. Curving for blocks underneath giant plane trees.)

So are we going? Shouldn’t we? Yes, let’s! What about breakfast? And we need more nectarines. Or apricots. Or whatever it is that our neighbors down the road are selling today. And let’s get the pains au chocolat and eat them in Ceret. Or maybe we should skip Ceret? No, we should go. We’ll go. After picking up the nectarines. And what about the pain au chocolat? And where does the coffee fit in? We go around like this for a while.

And it continues. So we’re driving? Yes, of course. Unless you want to walk for the nectarines and bakery and then drive? That doesn’t seem sensible. Or should we drive halfway down the hill? No, you drive to the nectarine place and I’ll go for the breads.... No, that’s silly. And where do I park for the nectarine place? In their courtyard. I can’t. You can. You do it.

I think we’ve reached the state of being completely unwound.


Eventually (with peaches and breads in the back), we do head for Ceret. The place where artists dallied some 100 year ago (for instance Picasso, year 1911). Now the place of the great market.





We buy many many good foods. Fruits. White asparagus for tonight’s dinner. Honey for home (why? Do we not have good honey at the Madison markets?). Cheeses. Butter. Olives, Olive paste. Anchovies. A truckload of things, it seems.































And I should mention this: at the markets, I’ve been collecting discarded wooden crates. Back at the farmhouse, in the mudroom, I store essentials in old crates used once for the sale of fruits and vegetables. It surely would be fun to include some crates from here. Ones that say cherries from Rousillon. Or onions from the Languedoc. You ask – how will I transport these back to Madison? Well, that’s a valid question. I’m working on a possible solution.


 



After the market, we drive back to Sorede. Lovely little Sorede -- between vines and pines it sits, right at the foot of these hills.











And here finally we sit down at the lower square café in Sorede. At 2 pm I drink my breakfast coffee along with a pain au chcolat.

At home, Ed naps. By evening I nudge him hard – we have to earn our dinner, I tell him. Since it’s already six and the clouds make it seem even later, I suggest a drive up the gorge just a couple of kilometers to the east of us. There is an old Roman church there that we’d not seen. And there are sure to be trails into the mountains behind it.

I have to say this about Sorede: it is not only the loveliest of villages (in my opinion), but it also has the prettiest roads leading to it. The photos just above are along the road to the north. And when we leave its perimiter to the east, we are again between vineyards and meadows. Always with mountains framing our world.










The drive through the gorge is along a narrow road – a bit eerie, in my opinion. A heavily wooded crevice in the mountain range.

The Roman church is old and you can’t look inside. You have to wonder why it was built in this remote spot nearly a thousand years ago.





There are always plenty of trails and footpaths up the hills and we find one for a brief walk through the forest. Neither of us is really prepared for a long mountain hike and nor is it an especially great evening for it. The skies are brooding, the forest seems almost dark. Or it could be that the stripped cork oaks look especially somber with their bottoms stripped of bark.




You know its time to turn back when you hold on to a branch for support and you hear it crack just as you gingerly attempt to avoid a slide down a slippery bit of rock.






One last look at the craggy summit just up ahead.





Okay. Back we go. An hour later we are in the car, making our way down the gorge toward Sorede. As you come out of the mountain crevice, you can catch a peek at the coast – just a thin strip of it.





But what is especially pretty is the sky to the west, toward Canigou and the higher elevations.





We stop the car to look, to admire, to photograph. To remember.


At home I prepare a supper of market foods. A potato/tomato/egg/endive salad with Catalan anchovies and of course, the white asparagus with parsley butter. And bread and cheese. That’s a given. However we go about our days here, we can count on this much: there's always a good supply of bread and cheese in our kitchen.

the flip side of things

A rapid step. No, not fast enough. Okay, I’m going to make a run for it. Meet me at the platform. I saunter ahead, reaching in my purse for the right coins to slide into the machine. Quickly. One, two, two more Euros. Now up the stairs. Yes! The train’s there. Uff, exhale. We’re on it.

You have to wonder – why the rush? Why step out of the leisure mode and run for a train even as there is another one just thirty minutes later?

It’s hard to shake the habit of rushing to make it. Whatever the "it" may be.

This particular mad dash was in the city of Perpignan. And there’s another peculiarity: why go to the city at all, when life in the village is so happily calm?

Blame it on the weather. Spoiled by days of warmth and sun, I looked up at the clouds rolling in from the mountains and thought – this is not a hiking day. Nor a beach day.

The market. We do want that. Friday is the second market day in Sorede and we combine our stroll down to the café with a stop at the lower square, where the market unfolds.

It’s always just a tad richer on Fridays. The delightful cheese lady is there.





The fish vendor too.





As for the produce – well, it’s been an atypical year. The drought up north must be keeping the artichoke crop down. I’m not seeing the lovely young vegetable that you can shave raw or just lightly steamed right into a salad. And the tomatoes – ah, the tomatoes. I tell Ed – these are the ones that aren’t selling. At 60 Euro cents a kilo, they’re a steal. (That’s about forty cents a pound). Tellingly, they don’t have the “origin” section filled out on the sign. So a customer asks – where are they from? The vendor answers truthfully – Spain. Ah. The customer moves to another batch. From Belgium. The vendor protests – there is nothing wrong with Spanish tomatoes! We just don’t like them as much – the customer retorts. A sensitive subject still. No matter. We buy the Spanish ones.


 


But the gaps here are obvious: There are many regions in France that are having a terrible farming season.

Okay. That was the morning. And what of the afternoon? I suggest we take the train to Perpignan.

It’s the Departmental capital – a crowded bustling city just 25 miles north of here. Last year we drove there – seems an easy and short ride, right? Bustling it may be, but it’s a mere quarter million people. Why not hop in the car and go?

For one thing, there’s the price of gas. We figure we’re spending about 14 cents for every kilometer.

But more importantly, I remember it being a hellish drive. Not so much getting there, but finding our way through the maze of old and congested streets. It took forever to find a parking spot.

In the alternative, there is the train. Five miles from Sorede, in the seaside town of Argeles sur Mer, there is a sweet little station – the type you can drive right up to, leave your car and walk right onto the platform.

After floundering a bit with the ticket purchase (please, American credit card companies – get the chip in already! Our magnetic strip cards do not work in European train stations!) we cross over to the platform and wait. Ah, punctual.





And fast. This little two car train outspeeds the cars on the parallel highway. And deposits us right in the center of things – at the station that Dali affectionately called “the center of the world.”





In Perpignan, we do some poking around – there are historic buildings to see...









... churches too, and stores. Lots of good shops. And merry-go-rounds on lovely squares.


 


Little ones on horses and camels.





And, of course, there are the cafes. So many cafes. We sit down at one on a quiet square. I order the cheapest item on the menu (a glass of wine), Ed sips mineral water. I people watch. He dozes.





People coming...





People going...


 


There is no better way to get your mind and body to unwind again. Let go of the jostle on the streets, forget about the noise of cars, buses, construction. Go limp.



By five, we’re ready to head back. But there is this one last shop I want to peek at. And so we do, putting us too close to the departure time and forcing that crazy run that we are so programmed to do when we’re in a city.

It’s 6:20. We’re at Argeles sur Mer, just a few minutes away from our (almost) favorite beach – Le Racou. Oh, for the cool waters of the sea! After the spin through the city, we feel clammy and just a touch frazzled.

We head for the beach.





Lovely little beach – you are heaven on a June evening.

But what’s this? A cool breeze kicks in. People pack up and turn away from the water. The place is now nearly empty.





And the desire to plunge in has dissipated. The sea has done its magic. Refreshed by merely gazing at it, we head back to Sorede.


Now is the night to try La Salamandre. I’ve been reading more about it – the restaurant with quite the regional reputation. And a great fixed price menu.

(And an obliging Ed. Maybe in anticipation of a good meal, maybe because he’s happy to be back in the village, but I actually am allowed to take one photo.)





The food is indeed superb.





I ask the woman who oversees the dining room, the wife of the chef here – you two are from Quebec, no? No, my family’s from here. But we lived in Montreal for a half dozen years. And we’re going back. Oh dear. Just as we discovered the goodness of the food here... Why? Because of the kids. The schools are not good? The schools here are fine. But after school – there’s nothing. In Montreal, there was so much to do! Here – it’s great for a vacation. But...

Oh yes, that "but." One person’s paradise is purgatory for another. I want more quiet. She wants more chaos. Chaos! Ed wants less traffic, fewer stores, I like the shops, even without the buying part. At least he and I are solidly together on the less traffic front. And on a calm life. Without clutter or noise. Still, there is much to toss about and consider. No settled road, no clue even as to what it might be.

For now we stroll back to our home here, in Sorede and I think this is the loveliest evening walk.





It’s nearly ten but not dark yet. Quiet. An occasional dog, a rustle of tree branches, the muffled puck as Ed kicks a stone up the hill.