Busy week

For our last week here, we've had the excellent company of guests Andy and Celia.  I began to be a little nervous when they said their plane was due into Toulouse at 09:15.  The Toulouse ring road is not the greatest place to be at any time of day, and particularly between 12:00 and 12:30, when people are hurtling home for their apéro and lunch - or more probably for lunch following the apéritif.  Morning rush hour is almost as bad, except that the collisions are at lower speeds.  Not that we had any, fortunately.  Dotty (our resident GPS lady) got thoroughly confused, and started leading us off into totally clogged-up suburbs, and then into tortuous detours, so it was around 09:40 when we arrived at the airport.  The next task was to find Andy and Celia: the 'Arrivals' sign points you to the opposite end of the airport from the one where they had actually arrived, and we'd booked into the 10-minute car park.  It didn't help that Martyn doesn't know how to drive my extraordinarily complicated smartphone - I'm scarcely better at it, I admit.  So the stressometer was well into the red sector by the time we finally connected.  Any road up, we got them safely home, and have been having a lovely week.

Quite a lot of the planning has not worked, however.  The first attempt at lunch and boat rides in Le Somail was frustrated by the fact that the restaurant was full, set out for a coach trip, funeral or whatever.  That gave us a good excuse to head down to the seaside at Gruissan, where all lunched and some paddled.  Nice place, Gruissan Port, but I've never known a time when it didn't smell of drains here and there. 

On Thursday we had some neighbours round for apéritifs.  Les and Julia are Brits who live most of the year in Philadelphia, and are great company.  We hardly knew each other before last week, having chatted briefly on the way to a piano recital last summer.  But Julia and I have been playing internet word games for a while now (she usually thrashes me), so it was largely a matter of picking up the hitherto unarticulated conversation.  It turns out that Les is a keen painter, and owns a separate property in the village, one room over the other, which serves as his studio and - potentially - gallery.  He has been working on a trio of paintings of the village on vast canvases: I'll post photographs of them at some point if he agrees and if I can get them off the said complicated mobile phone!  Les has kindly given me a box of acrylics that he in turn had been given by Mary Fernandez-Morris, once one of the village's most accomplished painters, whose eyesight, alas, no longer allows her to paint.  I've limited myself largely to the primaries for the past ten years or so, but now have a selection of colours that I'll need a bit of instruction on how to deploy. 

The village has its fireworks on 13 July, to avoid clashing with those of the préfecture town on le quatorze juîllet itself.  We ambled up the hill as usual to watch them, and I can't help feeling they've been working on a restricted budget this year.  Very good display all the same, and a sociable event at which one gets to chat to visitors from nearby villages.  There was a little jazz concert in the village as well - and the streets had largely been cleared by the time we headed out again to Le Somail for lunch. 

Splendid lunch as always, but this time with entertainment by a group of four a capella singers from the

Auvergne. They offered a good selection of numbers, moving around so that at various times they were performing to individual tables.  (They more than made up for the fact that, when we went round to the church a bit later for the published organ recital, the place was locked.)  We had hoped to go and play on the canal again in a little battery boat, but by the time we went to get one, they were all booked.  Oh well, next year, maybe. 

Yesterday we went for a ride down the coast.  Collioure was jumping as usual, and the car parks were full, so we had to drive through, pausing only at the local Fortnum's to get some bottles of water.  Martyn found a red and white dotted road (parcours dangereux ou difficile) from Port Vendres to Cap Béar.  The last time we used such a road was when we scrambled up most of the Pic du Canigou a couple of years ago, at much risk to my undergarments.  This road was at least tarmacked, but the absence of armco between the vehicle and oblivion was somewhat sphincter-testing.  Amazing views from the lighthouse, however.

The railway tendency enjoyed the views of the extraordinary stations and marshalling yards at Cerbère and Port Bou, where the standard and Iberian gauges meet, and the Talgo trains telescope their axles, in for north-bound, and out for south.  The yards dwarf the towns to which they are attached, and I suppose they will partly lose their raison d'être once the high speed line comes fully into service - though I guess it will be a while before the majority of freight services use it.  The old coast road is really spectacular, and we made plenty of stops to gape and take pictures.  We went as far as Cadaquès, where we paused for shandy and people-watching.  Nice little place: we hadn't been there for a decade or so.  I'm told there's a Michelin-starred restaurant there.  Noted.

Near Port Bou, where the Pyrenees meet the sea

 

Back on the road tomorrow; Andy and Celia to Gatwick via Toulouse, and your obedient servants to Bilbao for a few days before the long sail home.  Departing on the 63rd anniversary of a deservedly unmemorable date.