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In Which France Is Very French
April 28, 2008 by Mike
Narbonne
Route: Port-Verges - Narbonne
In my little world, where things pretty much only happen in order to provide ammunition for this blo-- I mean diary, it goes without saying that as soon as I'd ridden out of Port-Verges, I was surrounded by campsites (having settled for an hotel yesterday.
I wasn't surprised, either, to discover that the next small town along the coast, Collioure, also has a castle on a hill, a castle on the seafront, an abbey on a hill, boulangeries wherever I looked, oodles of famous painters having painted famous paintings of it. Just what you want from a small French town, in other words.
The seafront castle is a 'royal' castle: the royals were Aragonese monarchs from way back when, not French. The land round here was sold, swapped, conquered and offered as a dowry between various powers over the centuries. The castle, more of a fortress, dominates the small bay. Well worth wandering round, it has a novel way of keeping everyone happy. You know how annoying it is to discover the signs and information in the local language only? And you wish you'd paid more attention during French lessons at school? Rather than upset their foreign guests, this lot have decided to have no signs and no information whatsoever - in French, English or Klingon. But the size and symmetry of the castle walls speak for themselves.
And as for that history of great painters: I counted eleven budding Matisseseses sitting at their easels along one stretch of waterfront:
So that was Collioure. Port-Verges, by contrast, had a pizza parlour by the old fishing port. A post office (closed). And a sign for a Charles Rennie Mackintosh museum.. but no museum. (The great architect* retired there to paint. He should have designed a museum for himself first.)
[*And no, just because I refer to "the great architect", doesn't mean I'm a mason. I just put those words in to see if Google sends any trouser-leg-lifters my way. You're all welcome here.]
--
Feeling a bit guilty about passing some lovely places that are too far inland -- Perpignan, today, 13 of your Earth kilometres from the beach -- so I made a beeline late in the day for Narbonne. It *used* to be besidetheseaside, before rivers silted and changed direction, or something. And it's home to more of Ye Olde France: a cathedral which is impressively tall, if you like that kind of thing, and an Archbishop's Palace that is suitably grand for a Prince of the Church. There's water, too: the Canal du Midi passes through the city centre: lovely here, and I bet it's even lovelier as it passes through the unspoilt, dappled countryside.
Narbonne on a Monday night, though? Errr..... no.
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