Looking for a site around Carcassone we were struggling to find somewhere that was still open at this time of year. So we decided to just visit on the way to the coast – we’d found a site at Narbonne that was open, les Floralys.
What we neglected to do was to decide on where to park when we got there! So we ended up following the signs for ‘La Cite’ before taking a wrong turn and ending up on a dead-end outside a school. There was plentiful parking available so we stopped there! Much to the amusement of the school children milling around. (What we discovered when we left, after having to get the van turned round and the car re-hooked up, was that if we HAD carried on around the roundabout there was an actual parking area right there!!)
Anyway we unhooked the car and went off in search of parking closer to ‘La Cite’. We drove around and around the narrow one way system looking – any on-street parking is covered by permits it would appear, but we eventually found a car park by the river where we parked for free. From here it was about a 10 minute walk up to the medieval city.
Entrance to the city and it’s outer walls is free, but once inside you will pay to visit the castle, school museum and any other attractions of interest. The streets are delightful and the church (see main photo) is beautiful. There are the usual souvenir shops in abundance and many, many eateries. There is also, apparently, a haunted house. Close to the castle.
Back to the van for a quick bacon butty (cue more curious stares from the school kids…!) and then we were back on the road headed for Narbonne.
At this point it was lucky that I’m in the habit of following our route with the map as our Aguri tried to take us down a road that didn’t exist and I realised we were heading away from our destination, so we took over with the 2 phones on Google maps until the Aguri eventually caught up with us.
We chose to stay 2 nights, but it turned out we had little choice anyway as we were affected by the mass protests on fuel duty across the whole of France. We couldn’t even get to the supermarket for milk 😦 And it didn’t stop raining, pretty much, the whole time we were there.
When we couldn’t get to the shop we headed in the opposite direction, towards the sea. At the first roundabout we came too I said ‘we need to go right’, but Calv said ‘I want to go that way’ – up into the mountains! So we did, to see some stunning scenery as we wended our way up, and then back down, the mountain road.
Back at the roundabout we took the road towards Gruissan and Narbonne Plage. We spotted flamingoes out in the lake and a castle up on the hill – so we had to go have a look didn’t we?
Parking up we found our way through the narrow streets to the church and the steps behind leading up to the castle. At first we thought it was closed, but a quick push of the gate and we were in. There’s not much to see but there are wonderful views from the top. Whilst there the wind picked up and the rain didn’t let up, so we headed to an open bar for a quick drink. This particular bar was a sports bar that actually had a betting office on-site!
On the way back to the site we managed to get milk in the garage as we headed out of Gruissane. We did look to see if the protestors had abandoned their post underneath the bridge, but they hadn’t. They had when we popped out a little later though, but all the shops were shut – we’re not entirely sure that they bothered opening to be fair.
The protestors stopped us from driving in to see Narbonne, and the rain stopped us from cycling, so unfortunately we missed out.
The protestors were still out on Sunday when we left for Spain. We thought at first that they wouldn’t be as they weren’t at 10am, but they soon started appearing. We were held up for about 20 mins whilst trying to get out of Narbonne (tyres burning and everything), and then again around Perpignan – this time for over an hour 😦
Everything seemed to go smoothly after this; even the tolls weren’t overly expensive. It’s best to take the toll road from Perpignan into Spain as otherwise you have to deal with very mountainous terrain – the total cost in tolls from Perpignan to Figueres was 11.50 Euros and it took a whole hour off our journey time!
At this point we started noticing the floods on either side of the roads, whole fields under water. Then about 10 miles away from our site we were barred from taking our required road by a police blockade – that’s all you get though, no diversion or anything! So we had to stop and re-calculate a route, which we did, only to be stopped again. This time the police directed us around the floods, which made for a very interesting 10 minutes or so 🙂 We’d already changed our destination by now as we thought we couldn’t get to l’Estartit, and we were very relieved to pitch up for the night. Ready to head the 10 miles to l’Estartit in the morning.
turnrightoutofportsmouth 