Up early (for us) by 7am, breakfast, walk to the bus, bus to airport, plane to Barcelona, arrived 2pm. Rang the Eurolease man, and were collected to be taken to this year’s Peugeot 207. Sadly the same black colour, as we were hoping for something different. We decided the parking in Barcelona would be too impossible to manage, and we wanted to get to our target area of the Pyrenees-Orientales quickly anyway. Chose to use the toll motorways for time’s sake, and arrived at La Jonquera on the Spanish/French border by 4pm. It took us an hour to get some stuff from the supermarket, and more important from the booze barn we had visited several times two years ago (the booze is quite a bit cheaper in Spain than France).
The rough roadside prostitutes on the border had changed from black in 2009 to fat in 2011, but otherwise it felt like being home – it seems like no time since we were last here. In Céret we checked ourselves into Hotel Vidal, once a bishop’s residence, and still charming and importantly, cheap. Céret was as lovely as last time. It is very French, with nice wide streets lined with huge tall plane trees, dropping fluff at this time of year. The main streets of the old town are semi-pedestrian, and there is a particularly nice feel to it. We decided to stay here as a good base for looking up the Tech Valley for houses before we headed to our main target of the Tet Valley slightly further inland. I liked the place more than Karen last time, as she thought the trees were slightly enclosing. However we both loved the feel of it as we sat and had a coffee at Bar Pablo. Pablo Picasso, among many other famous artists, lived here and there is one of France’s best modern art museums here. The whole town is still into art, galleries and so on.
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| Ceret street |
We started our house search immediately by looking in agent’s windows. Not very hopeful, as the prices here are higher than inland, by a good margin. Dinner was a menu du jour at one of the dozens of restaurants – Céret is an all-year tourist town because of its beauty and the art museum so there are restaurants and bars a-plenty.
