Voila Vincent: Villages within cooee

Marquixanes: This is our nearest village (Mark'-i-shen) about three miles away. We don’t come here often, but we can buy fresh French bread here and wine on tap. Such a sensible offering wine on tap, and one which is becoming quite boutique and trendy elsewhere in the world, but is normale here, using locally grown grapes and hooking a tap to the vat or bowser. We simply take our own bottle and it is cheap. Which highlights the cost of packaging.

Marquixanes is built much like Eus, with its church at the top, and homes teetering and tottering down the side of a small mountain. Currently, it looks more like the set for a low budget French resistance war movie so it is not surprising to stumble upon a stone memorial in the place du village, honouring a young local French resistance boy killed by Germans secreted in the heavily scrubbed hills around the village.

Most houses in the winding streets are old and crumbling. Ancient wells from ancient times adorn derelict and boarded up Spanish-style courtyards, but with even a little renovation these could be made incredibly picturesque. Disconcertingly, every so often, a stunning renovation has already turned one of these wrecks into something so smart and gracious you are forced to do a double take. Who on earth did that? Why? Do they live here all year round, or just here for the occasional visit in season?

If all the houses in the village looked as loved and cared for as one or two of these renovations, Marquixanes could easily vie with Eus for the tourist market. And one day this quite possibly could happen.

Prades: This is our shopping town, about 5 miles away. It is also where our nearest farmers' market is held, on Tuesdays. Prades is bordering on unappealing, even ugly, in the main. It has few old buildings of much interest, apart from a church in the centre of town, and the modern buildings are generic, with little appeal.

What it does have, though, is one of the most comfortable centre villes around. It’s place du village – a long rectangle, where the main part of the market is set up-- is totally encircled and shaded by old thick-trunked oak trees that have been pollarded and pruned to shade the patrons of the street cafes, and the market folk.

And a random assortment of hobos hang out on park benches with their wine casks and beer bottles under the shade of the old oak trees in the aftermath of the market, when the square has been vacated and vacuumed for their pleasure. It is not often you see this in France, but you do in Prades. Mind you, this is such a fruit-growing area, and it is harvest time, that it makes sense for there to be an influx of temporary pickers and itinerant workers here for the season. Perhaps these are they.

On the other hand, for the last sixty years Prades has played host to Pablo Casals Chamber Music Festival which brings hoards of classical music afficianados to the valley each summer. These winos in the village square are not music folk.

One of the most beautiful venues for Casals music festival is up in the hills a couple of kilometres out of Prades: the wonderful Pre-Romanesque Abbaye de St Michel de Cuixa. This is a shady and contemplative spot with a stylish vaulted crypt, pretty cloisters reconstructed in pink Villefranche marble, and an almost primitively brutal stone nave. its alcoves adorned with delicate minimalist statues: mostly wooden, from long ages past: mostly 13th – 15th century.

Again, I have a favourite. This time it is the thick white stone slab of altar marble that once decorated a Roman monument somewhere, but was brought here in the early days of construction, and eventually consecrated as the Abbeye altar in 974. Over one thousand years ago.

In the aftermath of the French Revolution this simple slab of white altar was sold, then used as a balcony for a house in Vinca. There it would still be perched had it not been discovered in 1971. Three years later this ancient piece of stone was brought back to the abbey, sited again as the altar, and that is where it proudly stands to this day. And, hopefully, for another thousand years, or more.

VilleFranche de Conflent: Is a gorgeous little village, another of Frances’ most beautiful, one of three in this Department, and of great interest because Vaubin, one of the greatest engineers ever in France, designed the fortifications here.

Vaubin was born into a noble family, but at an early age was left a poor orphan to be brought up by peasants. Had it not been for a group of Carmelites who recognised his potential and tutored him in maths and sciences Vaubin would likely have grown up to be a peasant. Instead, he became one of the most celebrated and innovative engineers in French history. Any village that has Vaubin fortification credentials is now instantly famous.

Villefranche and its fort have become so. Deservedly. Vaubin’s fort, and its massive walls, has protected them from the dreaded Spanish invaders. This is a delightful little place: my favourite in the valley, so far. Like Eus it is on the pilgrim route to Santiago. Atop many of the door lintels sway effigies of broomstick witches: offering additional protection from the marauding Spanish beyond the mountains.

Perpignan: This is the capital of tbe Pyrennes-Orientales – just a little over a half an hour's drive from us. This once was the capital of Majorca -- and Spanish -- until King Louis X1 came along in the 15 century and made it part of France.

Lonely Planet says it has little to offer, but the downtown is fun. There is a delightful canal serpentining its way through the centre, great restaurants abound, and the people are delightfully friendly.

Here – at last! -- I found an internet dongle that will give me access to the Internet if and when I can discover how to simply recharge the French SIM card. The trials of a second language!

It is interesting to note that while we come across large numbers of English speakers in market places all around the Pyrennees-Orientales, they, like us, have little French. Sadly, some who have worked here for 35 years have little French! But, this region is more French than the Dordogne and the Lot valleys that we drove through two years ago. Not that we are looking for English speakers, quite the reverse. It is just interesting to note where the English migrate to in Europe. And France, clearly, is one of those countries.