Travel: Corbieres, France 2023 - Beaches and Medieval Cities

It has been four years since we last visited France (September 2019 and not too distant from where we are now). Who knew that first the Covid pandemic would curtail our plans to revisit for so long. 

La Meridienne

We are not keen flyers, and it is a long drive down to the South of France. Three hours from our home in Somerset to Portsmouth to pick up the overnight ferry to Ouistreham (Caen). Five and a half hours down to Clermont Ferrand, by way of a lunch stop at Bourges for our first night in France (Novotel). Then the real fun begins. 

The reading space in the gite

Travelling down La Meridienne (A75 autoroute) is a wonderful experience: driving through the massif central mostly at an altitude of about 750m. The French do good roads, and there is so much to see. 

Our holiday home for the week is situated near Sigean and we are bowled over by the house. We usually find a rustic gite, but this one is so modern, it looks straight out of the pages of an interior design magazine. It is all on one level and the space flows so nicely. I am completely enamoured with what I am calling the reading space - like an internal interior courtyard, full of the most amazing houseplants.

Argeles-Plages, and wearing my second Myosotis dress

After spending the first day relaxing and decompressing somewhat after the epic three day drive, our first day out was a drive down to Argeles-Plages. If you take the coast road via Sigean you end up driving round a couple of pretty impressive lagoons - much more interesting than the autoroute.  At Argeles-Plages, you have the beautiful (but quite sharp) sandy  beach, the Mediterranean sea with an outstanding backdrop of the Pyrenees.

Carcassonne is a must-visit destination if you are in the region. It is a spectacular medieval hill-top walled city. I always liken it to a real life Playmobil castle. As you can imagine, it does get busy but I think it is worth it, and you can always escape to the outer walls for a breather.

This time, we did the tour of the castle walls, which was really interesting. Much quicker to buy your ticket online and bypassing the queue for the ticket counter. We did this while standing in the queue!

Lagrasse is another medieval village, with a lovely abbey. The cobbled streets offer some very welcome shade, even in late September.

A view over to Lagrasse Abbey from the village

A chance to wear my Closet Core Charlie Caftan dress!

This wasn't our car, but it looks great with this stunning backdrop

And this was the narrowest of alleyways, where, if you glanced upwards, you could see the tendrils of this pretty flowering plant bridging the gap between buildings.

More to follow in a Nature and Animals part soon!

Love Mrs Jones x