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PYRÉNÉES ORIENTALES (66)

The Languedoc-Roussillon area include Lozère (48), Gard, Hérault (34), Aude (11) and Pyrénées orientales (66). The Pyrénées orientales is a beatuful region, marked by the variety and contrast of its landscape. North of Collioure, you have the cosmopolitan main city, Perpignan. South you find villages that are the most Catalan in the whole region. Finally, the rugged Côte Vermeille, the seashore to the north of the frontier, is ideal for swimming and relaxing, its rocky harbors, cut out of hills, forming a mirror image of Catalan Empurdà on the far side of the Pyrénées. South of the boarder to Spain, you find Barcelona 210 km from Collioure.

The movie Welcome to French Catalonia

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 Pyrénées orientales (66)

Three hundred days of sunshine

When the nineteenth-century Fauvist discovered the Côte Vermeille, which extends southeast from Argelès-sur-Mer to the Spanish border, they found natural inspiration for their revolutionary use of colour: the sunsets are a gently red, the sea is turquoise and, as Matisse wrote, no sky is more blue than that at Collioure.

Elne, inland, and once Roussillon`s main town, is the gateway to the coast, and proceeding south you`ll pass the broad beaches of Argelès, before reaching the characteristically rocky coves of Collioure, Banyuls, and Cerbère. The beauty of this stretch of coastline has inevitably been exploited, but cut up along the trails into the hills at the back of the resort and you`ll often be on your own. Public transport along the coast is good, with regular train and bus service connecting all the major points of call.

Catalan cuisine

This is a typical Mediterrean cuisine, with its use of olive oil, and specialties such garlic mayonnaise and a paste made of anchovies, olive oil and garlic. Boullinade, the Catalan version of bouillabaisse (fish soup), and civet de langouste au Banyuls (lobster), and Collioure anchovies.

Catalan charcuterie includes such delicacies as black pudding, pig`s liver sausage, and cured ham and salami from the Cerdagne mountain. Cargolade, snails from the garrigue grilled over burning vine.

Wine

Wine growers in the Languedoc vineyards, the main area for production of French table wine, are nowadays concentrating om improving grape varieties and and way they are blended, efforts which have been rewarded with and increase in the number of designated AOCs in the region. The Roussillion vineyards are noted for their high quality AOCs like Collioure and vins doux (desserts wine). The vins doux naturels produced in this region represent the majority of French production of wines of this type. The most famous examples are Banyuls, Muscat, Rivesaltes and Maury.

Cheese

You find the great cheeses from all over France in this area, but it is still worth hunting out local cheeses. Local cheeses can be picked up at country markets, or at times directly from the farms. The milk which produces the famus Roquefort cheese com exclusively from Haut Languedoc`s sheep. Try also Pélardon des Cévennes, a favourful goats milk cheese from St Hippolyte-du-Fort, the creamy but acidic Pélardon des Corbières, an older variant of the Cévennes version, and Le Pérail, a white fromage de brébis from the Gard. Whose taste transforms as it ages.