See

Collioure really is a postcard and, being one, it gets very busy in season. In fact from the first ray of sunshine onwards, which here means almost all the time.

But go in the morning and you understand what drew Derain and his friends: that insane light, those dense blues, and also the red of the bougainvillea and the ochre of the stone. Just the walk along the ramparts, the Catalan boats, or the soldiers training to swim fully dressed with a rifle between their teeth.

And as a reminder that this was not always a holiday resort but a hard place to live, the cannons are still there on the beach, along with a Christ eaten by rust facing the sea beside the Saint-Vincent chapel, at the end of the jetty, and Vauban's fortifications on the royal castle. The castle was the summer residence of the kings of Majorca, and Vauban had the ramparts raised at the end of the 17th century, the defensive works being completed in 1690. The price was old Collioure itself, razed to make room for them.

The rest of the time you can daydream at the sea in the morning, while making sure a hungry gull does not make off with your croissant. Browse the design shops, taste ten kinds of anchovy, taste wine, look at the paintings of Max Rovira, known for his portraits of Dalí in saturated colour, and those of his daughter Julie, who paints under the name Pitu, in their gallery at 14 rue de la Fraternité. Max Rovira also keeps a studio in Port-Vendres, on rue Jules Ferry. Or spend three hours at the table at La Balette, the restaurant of the Relais des Trois Mas, where Michelin-starred chef Laurent Lemal cooks. Anything goes.

One thing about the anchovies: most of them are no longer caught here. Anchovies worth fishing have become scarce in the Mediterranean, and the salting houses now work with fish from the Bay of Biscay or further afield. The craft, though, has stayed in the village.

For the energetic, you can climb up to Fort Saint-Elme, and the view is stunning. The fort itself is privately owned and has been closed to visitors since 2023, undergoing works: you go up for the path and the panorama, not for the inside. The view, at least, is free. On the way there is the Cortina windmill, a 14th-century mill, probably one of the first built in Catalan country, its entire wooden frame rebuilt using traditional methods during the restoration completed in June 2001. It no longer grinds grain, it presses olives. The Amis du Moulin association opens it on Wednesdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to noon, April to September.

Our own favourite spots: Le Neptune, open all year, Casa Rico, brand new, and Chez Simone. But that is very much a matter of taste, and it is worth wandering to find the spot of the moment.

Collioure tourist office ↗Max Rovira ↗Pitu ↗La Balette, Relais des Trois Mas ↗

We have talked about the sea, we have talked about the Albères, but there is another region and it looks like neither: the Fenouillèdes. Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet is an hour's drive from the villa, and from there you are closing in on the Aude, on Axat, Quillan and Limoux, and on the Cathar castles.

Before that, though, comes Tautavel, where our ancestors lived 450,000 years ago. The skull found in 1971 in the Caune de l'Arago by Henry de Lumley's team dates from that era, and the village prehistory museum tells the whole story. The cave itself is not open to visitors.

There is Maury too, and its vins doux naturels, grown on black schist. The appellation covers four communes around here, including Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet and Tautavel.

And there are the magnificent Galamus gorges, where the Agly has cut itself a corridor through the limestone. The site has been protected since 1927. To make the most of it you want to go through it canyoning, but even the view from the road and a quick paddle in the blue and green pools are worth the drive. The D7 crosses the gorges as a corniche, from Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet to Cubières-sur-Cinoble, and the Saint-Antoine hermitage hangs in the cliff at 376 metres, its chapel set inside a cave that Franciscans fitted out in the 15th century.

And if you feel nostalgic for Alphonse Daudet, Cucugnan is a stone's throw away, with the castle of Quéribus above it. The priest of the story is long gone, but you can buy bread made with local wheat flour: at the moulin d'Omer, Les Maîtres de mon Moulin, founded by Roland Feuillas, runs the whole chain from seed to loaf and sells its ancient-grain flours on site.

Tautavel Prehistory Museum ↗The Galamus gorges ↗Les Maîtres de mon Moulin ↗

Between Port-Vendres and Banyuls, the cove of Paulilles looks like an ordinary holiday beach, with its coves and its eucalyptus trees. For more than a century it was an explosives factory.

The plant opened on 5 December 1870, in the middle of the war against Prussia. It was founded by Paul Barbe, who represented Alfred Nobel in France, and Gambetta authorised the site precisely because you could not get any further from the enemy. By 1880 it was producing over five thousand tonnes of dynamite a year, and it would employ as many as three hundred people.

What moves me in this story is who worked there. A local workforce, often farmers and fishermen who kept tending their vines and olive trees on the side, with a great many women on the shop floor. People came down to make sticks of dynamite to put a little butter on the bread, between one fishing season and the next harvest.

Some paid dearly for it. On 24 January 1882 an explosion killed twenty people. Another killed five in April 1885, and three more in the mid-1930s. During the First World War, around ten conscripted Annamese workers died here too. A plaque on the site commemorates the workers killed at the factory.

Production stopped in 1984 and the last activities in 1991. The Conservatoire du littoral bought the thirty-two hectares of wasteland in 1998, and the site reopened to the public in June 2008, decontaminated and given back to the sea. The visitor centre, which is free to enter, tells the whole story, and you can also see the workshop where Catalan boats are restored.

That is what makes the place worth half a day. You visit the exhibition, taste next door at Les Clos de Paulilles, the estate the Cazes family owns in the cove, have a drink looking at the sea, then head off along the coastal path, which some call the customs officers' path and others the smugglers' path, until you find a quiet cove. It is four kilometres to Cap Béar. And you end the day thinking about the people who came here to make explosives, some of them at the cost of their lives.

Paulilles visitor centre ↗Les Clos de Paulilles ↗