Perpignan is a French town that used to be Spanish! And you can definitely feel the Catalan /Spanish influence in the food, the language, the architecture and the historical monuments around town. Perpignan wasn’t just Spanish however, It started out as the capital of the Kings of Mallorca – and the palace they built (Le Palais des Rois de Majorque) is still standing and in good nick today. The region was annexed to France in 1658 and in the early 1900s it became a famous artists town with notables such as Dali and Picasso calling it home. We arrived after 2 weeks in Spain, and it certainly still felt a little Spanish. Particularly the food which was a mix of churros and croissants, paella and bouillabaisse and plenty of fish – common to both!
We stayed a short walk along the canal from the old town and loved exploring the town as well as the local beaches. The town has beautiful narrow cobblestoned streets and plenty of alleyway bars and cafes. There’s a great historical site walking map at the Turismo and we were lucky enough to arrive on the first Sunday of the month when many of the attractions were free. The two highlights were the L’Hôtel Pams, an Art Deco mansion built in 1852 by Pierre Bardou, founder of the JOB cigarette paper company. He built his fancy factory and a mansion with an onyx and stucco staircase with amazing paintings (2nd pic below) and big ornate reception rooms which are now used for receptions for the city of Perpignan. It has a beautiful courtyard and is open to the public for free to wander around.
We also walked – a long way – up to Le Palais des Rois de Majorque (1st and 3rd pic) which is quite austere from the outside and very heavily fortified (it was used as army barracks for decades) but inside there are some original wall paintings that have been uncovered, dating from as early as the 13th century, that are quite remarkable. The Palace was free on the first Sunday of the month (when we happened to be there) and we walked around this majestic old palace peeking in to the old bedrooms, ballroom, notary and saw a great exhibition by a local painter and an interactive multimedia light show too.
Each day we drove out to one of the surrounding beach towns – here’s a short summary here of what we discovered. Beach discovery Day 1 was 30 mins southeast to Saint Cyprien Plage.
\We didn’t visit the old town of Saint Cyprien but went straight to Plage Sud beach area and parked near the port. We did a fantastic 8km loop walk around the marina and along the beach and back into town, picked up a couple of quiches at the boulangerie with the longest queue then drove a little further around to a secluded sandy beach called Plage de la Lagune to swim, read sleep the afternoon away. The beaches are sandy but the sea is rocky and sloping so you have to do what Jamie calls the Med-shuffle to getting to and out of the water. You shuffle into the water on the rocky pebbles then dive in when it is deep enough – then to get out you float in as far as you can then push up and waddle out the last few feet on to the sand.
Day 2 adventure was first to the beautiful town of Collioure – also about 30 mins south east of Perpignan but this time we found ourselves winding down from high up in the hills and parking up near the rugby stadium and walking down into the town. What a surprise to find a beautiful little old fort town with two big beach coves – Plage de Collioure and Plage de Port d’Avall separated by the Royal castle of Collioure. You can also keep walking around to the well-known Port Vendres which has a marina and more pretty cove beaches. Collioure is a great town for lunch with many lovely sea facing bars and restaurants and loads of character – there was even a trumpet player playing standing waist deep in the water as you walked from one cove to the next! It wasn’t our first choice for beaches as they are grey pebbly beaches, so we found our car and drove another 10 minutes up the road towards Argelès-sur-mer past an amazing castle and down to Port d’Argelès and parked at the little Plage du Racou – what a splendid find!
This is a tiny seaside village with little huts, bars and cafes lining the beach and we picked up two sensational paninis from the Racou Beach Snack and parked on the beach, sheltering behind a catamaran as it is quite windy. This beach is a favourite for windsurfing and we watched many very talented kite boarders and windsurfers race in and out right from where we sat.
Day 3 beach adventure was 18 km direct east to the local Perpignan beach – Canet Plage and Port Barcarès.
This is the beach of the tourist town Canet-en-Rousillon and it is big bustling and busy with lots of beach clubs for adults and kids water/trampoline/blow up toys fun parks dotted in between the adult clubs. There’s big carousels, loads of restaurants in the big beach facing plaza and 8 kms of sandy beach stretching from the Marina up to towards Saint Cyprien in the south – all backed by a large lake. A damp grey sea mist was firmly in place when we arrived (it was sunny and 25c when we left Perpignan and cloudy and 18 when we reached Canet plage!) so we enjoyed a long walk along the beach, wrapped up in our towels to protect us from the cool sea mist. We decided to head a little further north to see if the sea mist would clear and drove 12 kms up to Port Barcarès passing Ste-Marie plage and Torreilles beaches on the way and winding through a lot of large housing estates inland.
This area has a big bike and walking path along to the west of the port and we found a nice Turismo with maps that highlighted some good attractions in the area. We had a delightful lunch at a little café that made Italian specialties (spinach risotto and eggplant parmigiana) then drove another 6 kms down to La Grande Plage and sat in front of the iconic Le Lydia ship which unfortunately was being painted so was covered in scaffolding and not looking her best. Le Lydia is the icon of Port Barcarès and was beached here to launch the resort area in 1967 as a curiosity- tourist attraction (its the only beached cruise ship in the world). Le Lydia was actually a cruise ship called the Moonta, in the Spencer Gulf in Australia until 1955. This beach isn’t the prettiest we’ve been to – we found the ship a bit of an eyesore (probably due to the scaffolding) and the famous leaning palm trees had all died off at this end of the beach. There is a kilometre long Allee des Arts which is a paved sculpture walk with some interesting (but rather old and tires) sculptures that runs between the endless rows of old apartments and the beach. About 2 kms further on, you can access the Cap de Front – where they hold the famous windsurfing championships – this area backs on to a protected nature reserve which you can also walk around. My vote would be that this area is good for walking – not so much for a day on the beach!
We went up and around the big Etang de Salses to get back to Perpignan taking a look at the at Port Leucate and another long sandy beach with a pedestrian seafront and loads of apartments and a lively port quays. But once again loads of apartments piled near the beach and not the prettiest place.