It's the greatest mixture of sun, sea, wonderful food, splendid mountains to climb (not experts, just the rest of us), decent relaxed people (many of them speaking Catalan and finding affinities immediately when they know you are Irish). And you can go on adding to that. There are the amazing Cathar castles, perched on pinpoint-sharp mountaintops, made as inaccessible as possible by their builders. They were a heretic sect who, of course, some eight centuries ago had to be stamped out, burned out. These castles, or ruins of them, are, ironically, a considerable tourist draw for this region.
Then there is the food. Fish on a scale that amazes, from loup de mer to oysters and mussels, often made an elevenses by visitors, standing at a bar well-known for its good food. This is not a fashionable, elegant, beblazered Scott Fitzgerald area of France. It is very much a householders' and visitors' area, cycling home at 10 o'clock in the morning, their market purchases in plastic bags hanging from the handlebars, or, more likely, in a big basket, fore or aft. Rivers behind you among the castles and monasteries and forests. Sea in front of you if you still, in spite of warnings, want to lie in the sun or half-shade all day.
To be more precise, it stretches from Perpignan to the Spanish coast, the last part of it, from Argeles-sur-mer to the border, being known as La Cote Vermeille or the vermillion coast (red might be better in English) because of the tint of the rocks. Much of this area, that around Collioure, became first known to many when it was several times shown on television that Patrick O'Brian, the celebrated writer on sea battles of the Napoleonic era, had lived at Collioure for something like 40 years, and was seen going out in the boat of a fisherman, probably an anchovy fisherman, for that little town is the heart of an anchovy industry. Locals say the lovely little fish is not as abundant as it was, but try some, freshly caught, salted for a day or two and eaten with red pepper slices or whatever you want, and you forget the brown limp little creature that comes out of a tin.
Wine, of course, in great variety. And wines to go with everything. Cotes du Roussillon, red, rose and white, all AOC. But the air, the inland scenery, too, with its megaliths, castles and clear-running streams! Why so much about food? Well, Ceret is surely the cherry capital and all kinds of fruit and vegetables here look and taste better than anywhere. Another day maybe, something more about this fascinating territory.