This is a truly lovely area.

We started with Perpignan, a gorgeous city, with great shopping, lovely old streets and buildings, and all the usual major buildings.

This area has been much fought over, and this is the Castle of the Kings of Majorca, from when it was the mainland part of that kingdom, in the 13th and 14th centuries.

A preserved area of streets called a coronell, which means a dead end. These were originally laid out in the 11th century. (No pun intended!)

The Notre Dame Gate. That bus reminds me of our walk from our camp site. We set out to the bus stop which we thought was just up the road. After walking and walking and missing two buses, we realised that what we thought were bus stops on the map, were in fact roundabouts!. When we finally found a bus stop, after 40 minutes, it was 30 minutes to the next bus, so we kept going, and eventually reached the city, just beating the bus! If we had turned the other way at the site gate, we would have found a bus stop in about two minutes! Ah well, this is why we are feeling so fit!

 

The cathedral. We had a quick look inside, never having been in a Catholic cathedral. It is lovely, though rather dark, and very different from English cathedrals.

The Campo Sancto Funeraria. I haven’t yet been able to find out what a funeraria is.

Our next stop was the Fort de Salses, another castle with the builders in:-)

We took the tour, and this is the view over the rooftops to the Pyrenees. The castle is very well preserved, and again, looks very different from English castles. This castle was built when the area was part of Catalonia, to keep the French out! It was interesting to find out how the castle was constantly redeveloped as artillery came in, with stone cannonballs giving way to iron, then bigger iron ones, all designed to knock the walls down.

Our tour group. Looks just like Close Encounters of the Third Kind:-)

The ovens. This is what I find most interesting about looking around old buildings, not the fancy rooms, but how they actually did things in those days without technology. I don’t know if this is real bread fossilised, or shaped stones:-)

We had a really nice afternoon visiting these hoodoos, Les Orgues d’Ille sur Tet.

This morning we started with Port Vendres, where we had very little sunshine, but here is the bit we got.

Then we went on to Collioure, 4 km away. I felt a bit sorry for Port Vendres, because Collioure is stunning. Must be hard to compete! This is the Royal Chateau, currently being used as a marines training establishment.

And here are the marines, training!

Colin taking his photo of the chateau…

and this is his photo.

This is an old lighthouse which has been converted into a church. It is pretty much the signature building of the town, usually photographed from the other side, but we didn’t have the light for that. We will just have to go back!

There are more places to go around here, but tomorrow we leave for Spain.