Friday September 6th

Wendy and I have the sand between our toes on the humongous beach at Gruissan and Narbonne Plage, 44 years after the last time we were here.

Back in the glorious summer of 1980, Wendy and I, Chris and Ginny, Sue and Trev, John and Sandra, and Max squeezed in to three cars for two weeks on the Mediterranean before we started teaching or returned to complete our teaching degrees.

The place is now unrecognisable (apart from the beach). The municipal campsite we stayed on has long gone and in its place are row after row of holiday apartments and the village centre has been replaced by a modern square of restaurants, bars and beach shops.

Camping la Coté des Roses is actually in the village of Gruissan which sparked a dubious memory Wendy had of us visiting a bar there to watch a rugby match, (Me – no recollection at all!) so we went to find it. One of the perks of being in France is that they have excellent cycle paths and we were able to cycle the nine kilometres there with out going on a road once, which was nice, because Bryn had decided to share his displeasure at not being allowed to run free, by singing a sad song at random moments.

Unsurprisingly we didn’t find ‘the bar’, but we did find that Gruissan is a very fetching little place, it even has a castle built in 1084 that was used to protect the villagers from the Barbary pirates that use to regularly attack the place.

That evening we strolled into Narbonne Plage (it was only 40 minutes!) and found an excellent restaurant for fish, octopus, oysters and a couple of bottles of excellent local wine – I don’t remember drinking the wine 44 years ago?

Cheers to Narbonne Plage 1980 and 2024!