A few spring days around Narbonne, in photos
Photos from a late-March trip around Narbonne and the Côte Vermeille: Carcassonne, the canal at Narbonne, a rhino at Sigean, and the wind on the coast at Collioure, all off-season and under the sun.
At the end of March we spent a few days around Narbonne and down the coast toward the Spanish border. We went off-season on purpose, and it paid off: empty car parks, and towns that still belonged to the people who live in them. In summer this coast must be packed shoulder to shoulder. In March it was ours.
This one is mostly photos. A short trip that mixed things I don’t usually get in the same week: medieval stone, a loud coastline, and, somehow, a rhino.
Walled towns and a quiet canal
Carcassonne is the postcard, and it earns it. Even with the school group crossing the bridge, the medieval cité is something to stand in front of for a while. Narbonne was the quieter surprise. The canal cuts straight through the middle of town, plane trees on one bank and that one tree in full bloom before the rest had woken up.
A rhino in the Aude
The Réserve africaine de Sigean sits between the lagoon and the hills, and you drive part of it from your own car. A white rhino working through the garrigue, with dry brush behind it, is not what I expected to find in the Aude.
The coast, almost to ourselves
Then the Côte Vermeille, where the Pyrenees drop into the Mediterranean: Cerbère, Banyuls, Port-Vendres, Collioure, one after another. The wind was up and the sea was loud. Watching the water go white on the rocks below Collioure, I kept landing on the same plain thought. France has a lot of beautiful regions, and the Pyrénées-Orientales is firmly one of them.