Thursday 1 October - Argeles and Other Little Towns

[Photo - Argeles-Sur-Mer beach]

We thought that today we would make an effort to get a feel for the smaller towns of the area, so headed north-east to Argeles. This town is in two parts. We started in Argeles village, which is a pleasant small town with a nice semi-pedestrianised main street. Started the morning off well with a coffee, then had a bit of a look around, and bought a pair of nail scissors. Argeles looks remarkably un-messed-up by tourists, despite being very close to the sea.

The reason became clear when we headed to Argeles-Sur-Mer, its beachfront brother which swallows up the holidaymakers. This is a total beach resort town, with a feel not unlike some of the smaller Australian Gold Coast towns. A massively wide beach, rather deserted today, with rows of two to three storey apartments behind, and plenty of tacky shops for the visitors. All around are huge camping sites. I suspect this area caters more for the French than foreigners. We liked Argeles village, but the beach version was pretty average. No doubt quite fun when it is packed in summer, but not the place to do anything other than swim and sunbathe.

From Argeles, we headed to St Cyprien. Nothing to report about St Cyprien, so tried our luck with Elne. By now it was lunchtime, so we looked for a place to have a decent lunch, having given up the idea of eating out in Laroques. However having gone up and down the streets of Elne, and observed that the vast bulk of the youth here is North African, we didn't see anything that took our fancy so headed back to Argeles, where we sat down at our coffee place from the morning.

For the grand sum of 11.50€ we had a menu of pizza and bruschetta, dessert, a glass of wine and a coffee. The pizza and bruschetta were great. My bruschetta had rounds of melted mozzarella and lashings of Roquefort for flavour. Karen struggled with finishing her pizza. Back home to find Valerie and Lorcan back, getting their packing finalised before they headed back to Ireland. They will be returning here the night before we leave so they can tidy up. They are trying to sell their two apartments in Collioure, but without success so far.