Ceret and Rugby

This morning we drove into the mountains along a narrow, winding road to visit a market in the town of Ceret, once the home of Matisse and Picasso. Along the way we had a lovely view of Mount Canigou with the moon faintly visible above it.

The market stalls lined both sides of several streets that wound through the town and sold just about everything—spices, flowers, seafood, crepes, different kinds of bread and croissants (including the children’s favourite “pain au chocolate”), vegetables, fruit, sausages made of all kinds of ingredients including duck which is very popular here, and a range of clothes, jewellery, and hand-made soaps. There was a stall selling the widest variety of dried fruits that we have ever seen—figs, kiwi, melon, papaya, strawberries, kumquat, banana, pear and countless others. Everyone was carrying bunches of the bright yellow mimosa flowers. These lovely trees are in bloom here at the moment.

Many of the produce stalls had piles of the fractal-like Romanesco cauliflowers (see below), which I was excited to see. Beautiful!

On the way out of the town we stopped to take a look at the river, which had an impressive railway bridge over it (together with a road bridge and a 14th Century stone bridge) and a beautiful backdrop of the Pyrenees.

Posted by Jo

In the evening, Charlie and Simon went in to Perpignan to watch them play Newport Gwent Dragons. Cheering for the home side (of course), we were not disappointed (sorry Mark!).

Charlie and the ref.

The Newport lads warming up.

Charlie and the linesmen.

Perpignan full-back Porical didn't miss a kick in the first half, to give the home side a 15-3 lead at half time.

Tries were traded in the second half before Perpignan pulled away to finish with a 27-13 victory.

Unfortunately it was a pretty late kick off (9pm) so Charlie had a bit of an impromptu snooze and consequently missed the last 20 minutes.