Picture-perfect Côte inspired artists

THANKS to two Irish entrepreneurs, the most distant part of France in now one of the easiest to reach, at least from Dublin.

The trick is to take a flight, not to France, but to Girona in Spain.

This city of 71,000 souls had a modest little airport until recently. Then an Irish budget airline began using it and the airport, you might say, took off. It now has connections to over 80 destinations.

The French border is 60km north of Girona but the mean green traveller need not hire a car; an Irish transport venture has closed the gap. Frogbus will take you to Le Boulou for as little as €5 if you book on line. The coach service is the brainchild of Monaghan man Joe Shannon and his Norwegian business partner.

The route from Girona is said to be the one which Hannibal followed in his surprise attack on the Romans in 218BC. The 430km wall of the Pyrenees, separating France and Spain, is a formidable obstacle.

At the Mediterranean end, the mountains slope down to the sea in a series of rocky headlands and cliffs.

The great Carthaginian general brought 50,000 infantry, 9,000 cavalry and 37 elephants over the Col du Perthus, a mini Kyber Pass, which overlooks the Côte Vermeille.

‘Vermeille’, as the cognoscenti will know, translates as ‘vermilion’, a fancy word for ‘red’. Sailing along the coast last week, the terrain did not seem red to me but a rich mixture of browns, yellows and greys, bathed in bright sunshine.

The light, in this warmest region of France, has attracted invaders whose legacy has been more enduring than Hannibal’s; painters love the place. Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall spent time here.

So did those colour fanatics, the ‘fauves’; Matisse and Derain immortalised Collioure, a charming fishing town with flower-bedecked balconies overlooking old streets and elegant Catalan boats.

Reproductions of their canvases are mounted at viewpoints where their easels once stood. Not all the artists were blow-ins.

Aristide Maillol was a local boy who made good; this rough Catalan peasant became one of the great sculptors of the 20th Century.

His sturdy buxom ladies adorn the town squares of the region, a serene and soothing presence.

French Catalans seem happy in their dual identity. They not as stridently nationalistic as their countrymen south of the border. The Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936.

When the Nationalist forces pressed northwards two years later, marooned Republican soldiers fled in their thousands over the mountains to France.

In 1940, the refugee flow was reversed. Jews, allied airmen shot down in France and ‘évadés’ who had fallen foul of the Vichy government or the occupying Germans, found their way to the Eastern Pyrenees.

Block-houses and gun emplacements defaced the beach at Argelès. These are now gone but this magnificent stretch of sand attracts another army; tourists.

The traditional seaside resort, with easy access to the mountains, is the camping capitol of the world. There are 55 sites.

But the human invasion of the area is a drop in the ocean compared to the feathered one. Each autumn, millions of birds from all over Western Europe head south for Africa.

Many follow the line of the coast. River deltas and marshes, tucked behind dunes and sand-spits, once dotted the low-lying Mediterranean coast, providing rest and recreation stop-overs for weary birds. In the Riviera to the north and the Costa Brava to the south, most of the wetlands have disappeared under concrete.

The Pyrenean coastline, however, is still largely intact and strictly protected.

At the Mas Larrieu reserve last week, warblers and flycatchers flitted about in the dense reed-beds while swifts and swallows wheeled noisily overhead.

There were flamingos at Canet Lake.

The network of reserves, with their wetlands lagoons and coastal pine forests, is a vital resource for Europe’s birds.

The naturalist too is catered for; there are information panels, paths and strategically placed hides.

France’s first marine reserve was established of Banyul-Cerbère in 1974.

Stretching along the coast for 6.5km, it protects species threatened by pollution and excessive fishing. There’s an underwater nature trail, supervised by lifeguards.

For tourist information on the Côte Vermeille, check out www.cdt-66.com.