COLLIURE, LAZY DAYS AND BIKE RIDES IN THE WIND

May 11-15, 2007

It was a pretty blue day on Friday, so we decided to take a trip to the seaside village of Collure, where Matisse lived and painted many of his most famous scenes.

It was a beautiful, blue, and windy day.  We were able to park right along the beach and got the tour guide from the Tourist Information.  We strolled around the town, which has marked many of the famous viewpoints pained by Matisse and his cronies.  The town is colorful and quaint.

After our walk around town we stopped at a nice oceanfront café for lunch.  I had a seafood salad with little octopi and mussels and shrimp and Don had a nice salad too.  After a bit a nice older lady sat down at the table next to us.  She was just a tiny wisp of a thing, but she ate her salad, steak, potatoes, and 3 side dishes with gusto.  We got to talking and found her to be quite charming.  She recommended the Tart Tatin for dessert and Don ordered it and it was delicious.  I can’t wait to get back to my kitchen to try to replicate it.  It had a wonderful caramel flavoring.

The following day we went back to our nice bike ride, starting in Padern, along the Torgan River and over the Col de Ferreol and back down through Tuchan.  Very pretty scenery, nice climb, fun ride.  After we finished up our ride and lunch we drove over to the famous Gorges de Galamus.

We had some rain and wind the next day, so we drove over to Port la Nouvelle to go to the bank.  While Don was waiting for me to get money an elderly lady came over to the car and started talking with him.  Although he really couldn’t understand her he had a chat with her and we eventually found out that she was an airplane pilot in WWII.  Mme Andree Brunet is quite a character and she gave us her card, which has a sketch of an old biplane on it

We thought we would leave on Tuesday, but we were worried about the strong headwinds along our route, so we stayed on and went over to Villerouge de Temenes.  There is a nice castle here and another audio guide telling the story of a man who was the last Cathar “perfectus” to be burned at the stake.

Wednesday morning we got up and the winds were not too strong on the cliff, so we decided we might as well try to make a break for it.  We cleaned and packed and headed to the Perpignan airport to turn in the car.

By the time we got the car turned in and started out on our bikes the winds were picking up.  We hoped to make it to St. Paul de Fenouille for the night.  We rode out through the wheat fields and vineyards and the farther we went the stronger the winds got.  We stopped in a little bus shelter for lunch and then headed out again, only to find the winds were now so strong we could scarcely pedal at all.  We made it to Maury, 6k short of our goal, and arranged a room for the night.  Our average speed for the day was 4mph.