Le Boulou

25 August It seems some campsites close for the grape harvest, and the season started earlier than ever this year, especially in the d'Oc/Roussillon just north of Perpignan - Rivesaltes - where I failed to find a pitch because site owners and their families were helping, I think, the village co-operative. I'm sure none of us resents their efforts for a moment. I headed back south and stopped for the night on an aire just off the town centre of le Boulou, a crossing of roads to the Tech valley, the coast of Port Vendres and the border, to Spain via the mountains and back to Perpignan. This morning I found a site 2 kms up in the hills, Mas Llinas. I think Mas is Catalan for farm or estate: the map is full of them.

Le Boulou/el Vol'o is the surviving "centre of the French cork industry" I read somewhere, the most prominent company Bouchons Trescases. It's a pleasant small town on its convenient crossroads, with a market on Thursdays. It has a 12th century romanesque church, beautifully plain but with fine carvings above the door by le maitre de Cabestany.

1st September After Le Boulou, with a replacement klaxon, a trip further down the coast - over the corniche to Banyuls, where the vendange is under way and small farmers bring trucks of grapes at arranged times to one of several caves in town. One town further -by train by choice - is Cerbere, just north of Port Bou.

Banyuls attracts visitors and has a healthy local economy. Cerbere is pleasant but not thriving, in spite of recent assurances by the Consil General that its mairie is not going to close. The little gravel beach is dominated by a railway viaduct carrying passenger and container traffic over the border, but the railway hotels are run down or closed. Information about rail travel further into Spain than Port Bou is unavailable.

3 September Back over the corniche and out of the Arbere hills to the sharp contrast of Argeles sur Mer, its flat landscape, easy cycling and miles of sandy beach. I stay four nights at the quiet end of the resort, 50m from the beach. This is the beach of La Retirada where tens of thousands of Spanish refugees from Franco arrived in 1939 and large numbers of them died during the first winter. With France herself at war in September, there can't have been many resources to spare for refugees.

By contrast, I find it a good place to pedal or try the sea for the first time, now that La Rentree (to school and work) has suddenly made campsites, roads and resorts quieter.

7 September Restless again, and wishing to add possibilities to my list of sites that stay open after September, I set off north to the smart Perpignan suburb of St Assicle (small site, worn facilities, but kept clean and secure), Salses le Chateau (two good sites) and Leucate, where I stay because it is already afternoon and I like the village, on a small hill between a windy lagoon and the sea.

This is more famous wine country, producing - in ascending order of cost - Fitou, Corbieres and vin de pays. Tractors with small trailers queue up to unload their grapes at the cooperative on the flat top of the hill, and local customers refill their 3 or 5-litre containers from the taps at the (smart) shop on site, which also sells a variety of Fitou/Corbieres/VdP in red, white and rose.

10 September After a drive north to the outskirts of Narbonne to ask about gas, I turn west and stop at Trebes, 6 kms short of Carcassonne by road and 11 by the Canal du Midi. I cycle into Carcassonne along the towpath and back in time for a late dinner lit by the outside light of the neighbouring campers, on the banks of the Aude, on the edge of the Minervois. La Montagne Noire is to the north.

12 September South to Foix again but this time to Camping du Lac. Revisited the best-run second-hand bookshop I've been in, L'ivre Livre.

14 September Mirepoix, also in the Ariege, arriving on market day. The morning provided plenty of interest, but all goes quiet at lunchtime, apparently for the rest of the week. From the town runs the 38 km Cathar route for walkers and cyclists - in reality a disused railway line south.

16 September moved into the Pyrenees again, to the valley above Ax-les-Thermes. Good walking with well marked paths.

17 September Over the top (by tunnel, in fact) to the Cerdagne which I visited once on the yellow train.

18 To Barcelona and back by train for 16 euros. 4 hours available to stroll and have a late lunch/dinner. The line - the trans-Pyrenean railway of the 1920s - has 28 tunnels in as many miles.

Now camped in Bourg Madame until I decide to leave the mountains for the lower valleys and Perpinya again.

Caen to Ceret

France, August 2009

2 in Normandy, including Port en Bessin for breakfast and Bayeux for lunch.

3-5 in Saumur, including cycling from the campsite on a Loire island up to the chateau.

5-6 at le Marnier, Abzac (NW of Limoges) to see Mike and Wendy's new place and meet Eveline.

6 lunch in Bergerac and overnight in Castillones.

7 motorway for the first time from Agen to Toulouse, then south into Pyrenees for a night near Foix.

8 Night in a lay-by south of Narbonne.

9 Nefiach in Tet valley. Nearby Millas plans afternoon bull-run through town streets as part of Catalan festival (Feria de Millas) but rain stops play.

10 trip to Perpignan to set up Poste Restante. Lunch in quiet Maroc restaurant in old town.

11 Move to Ceret in Tech valley. Relaxed site: no reservations and stay as long as you like. Streets full of evening craft fair.

12 Exhibition of painters who have stayed in Ceret since Picasso and Braque arrived in 1911. 17 rooms of 30 painters.

13 Bus trip* further into Pyrenees, to Prats de Mollo, Arles sur Tech and Amelie les Bains. Spas, castles, fortified churches, hot climate and an abbey with its miracle. Evening music performance in Ceret square from retired Catalan mariners.

14 Collioure in an hour by bus and train. Exhibition of ceramics and paintings of local landscape by Beatriz Garrigo, born Barcelona and living in French Catalonia (in les Alberes, locally).

15 Feast of the Assumption. Rest day ending with bullfight in Arenes de Ceret (Grand Bolsin Taurin). No horses to disembowel and no bulls killed this side of the Pyrenees, but the last bull made things frightening enough - a large, snorting animal, dripping spittle and hoofing the sand before charging anything with a neat turn of speed and speed in turning. He refused to be tricked out of the ring until he had completed whatever job he had in mind. (They don't kill the bull this side of the Pyrenees. One consequence may be that it learns with experience.)"Avec la participation des Ecoles de Tauromachie de Nimes, Arles, Beziers, etc..."

16 a quiet Sunday on bike and at Cafe de France/Grand Cafe. Open air cinema at 9.30 (Mama Mia dubbed. Back in van by 10.00)

17 after a short morning bike ride to research gas cylinders, catch 10.05 bus to Perpignan. Poste Restante works.

(*You can travel anywhere in the Pyrenees Orientales by bus for 1 Euro, including connections in Perpignan if made within 2 hours the start of your trip.

21 August - Prades

After returning to Nefiach/Perpignan for 3 days and exploring further up the Tet valley by bus and train, I have chosen the beautiful town of Prades/Prada, overlooked by the Canigou /Canigo, all 2700-odd metres. When Pablo (Pau) Casals left Spain in 1939, he settled here and in 1950 founded a music festival which still takes place from the last week of July to mid-August. There is also now a Prades Film Festival (started 1959) earlier in July.

The lower Tet valley was wide and flat-bottomed, good for steering vans and pedalling bikes. After Prades things get narrower and more winding. The SNCF railway runs only as far as Villefranche de Conflent and after that there is a narrow-gauge railway, built about a century ago but now used by tourists, which goes much higher towards Font Romeu, Bourg Madame and almost to Andorra: le Train Jaune. A surprise is that about 6000 feet up there is a plateau, the Cerdagne, with rolls of mown hay in fields separated by dry-stone walls. Very familiar.

Bourg Madame is linked/separated by a bridge over le Rahur (a brook or river) from Puigcerda in the Spanish Cerdana. No border patrols nowadays, but there is an abandoned French customs post with a letter or two missing from its sign. Apparently the town's decline (the Pyrenees is depopulated) has been a bit more marked since smuggling became irrelevant. There is also a Spanish enclave, Llivia, an anomaly of the Treaty of the Pyrenees (says the Rough Guide), with its own small airfield. At least, I think the airfield was in Llivia. Without barbed wire, searchlights, a channel or at least a dyke it's difficult to be sure where a border runs.

25 August It seems some campsites close for the grape harvest, and the season started earlier than ever this year, especially in the d'Oc/Roussillon, specifically just north of Perpignan - Rivesaltes - where I failed to find a pitch because site owners and their families were helping, I think, the village co-operative. I'm sure none of us resents their efforts for a moment. I headed back south and stopped for the night on an aire just off the town centre of le Boulou, a crossing of roads to the Tech valley, the coast of Port Vendres and the border, to Spain via the mountains and back to Perpignan. This morning I found a site 2 kms up in the hills, Mas Llinas. (Spanish or Catalan? )

Le Boulou/el Vol'o is the surviving "centre of the French cork industry" I read somewhere, the most prominent company Bouchons Trescases. It's a pleasant small town on its convenient crossroads, with a market on Thursdays. It has a 12th century romanesque church, beautifully plain but with fine carvings above the door by le maitre de Cabestany.