Farewell La Franqui

Welcome once again to our weekly blog,

This sadly is the last blog from La Franqui as we now must start our journey towards Italy and beyond, this place has served it’s purpose of keeping us entertained and has also been a nice place to avoid silly season and the high prices of almost the whole of the south of France.  Whilst here we have cycled, paddle boarded, walked, land yachted and kited our “Flip Flops” off with 20 days out on the water in about every wind condition there is on every size kite we have, and along the way have met and made so many new friends. 

We also celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary and we thought of no better way to spend it than to do a 50 mile bike ride along the Canal de La Robine which runs through the Saint Lucie nature reserve with it’s fantastic lakes dotted along the way either side of the canal.  The route starts here in La Franqui then hugs the canal all the way up to Narbonne where there are some very nice old parts to the City as you can see.  Then to finish the day we headed into La Franqui to treat ourselves to a meal and a pitcher of Rose wine at our favourite little restaurant, “Le Golf” over looking the beach.

Marc & Kitty our Belgian friends who we had helped out last week with their pitch problems kindly invited us round for dinner one evening. I asked Marc what was on the menu and he replied “fish and salad” as he had heard Julie talking to Kitty about how she needed to eat more fish!!   Well it’s not at the top of my list of favourite food but after asking Marc if it was very fishy he said no it’s beautiful, so I thought just go with it as it is nice to try new things from time to time.  Sunday evening came and we all sat down kids included to this feast of fish (Dorade) which we later found out to be Bream which Marc cooked on the BBQ with lemon & garlic and a dressing he had made to go with it. I must admit I was surprised at how nice it was and the 3 whole fish soon got eaten along with the salad.  As a way of us saying thank you we had earlier popped into Leucate village and bought a fresh fruit tart for dessert which the kids seemed to get excited about.  It was a very nice evening just chilling and chatting and one thing we all laughed about was the blue jobs (man things) and pink jobs (girl things) that need to be done around camp and in the vans.   Marc jokingly said yes LA & LE i.e. LA washing machine, LA hoover and LA cooker for the girls and LE Kite, LE Motorbike & LE Van for the men which when you think about it it makes sense!! but I am sure it’s not correct!!  Marc & Kitty left a few days ago and we helped them pack down their tent so Marc had enough time for one last kite with us.  It was a great session with perfect wind and the three of us had a nice little area to ourselves, it was just a fantastic end to their holiday and Kitty and the children had a good time on the beach too.  

The wind here gave us one last show of what it’s capable of going from dead calm to 101km/62mph in a matter of hours.  We had a few new arrivals around us putting up their Decathlon tents and tarps to shade themselves from the sun and wind but we just couldn’t sit back and see it all destroyed as we had looked at the weather and seen a forecast of the wind so we explained the strength of the Tramatona and the direction that it comes from so the few that we did warn changed their camps and took anything that could catch the wind down or put extra ropes on it.  The forecast was spot on as we were woken up in the early hours firstly by heavy rain then the wind which just whipped up from nowhere to 101km gusts, all we could hear was people shouting and the knocking in of extra tent pegs all around, but the unlucky ones ended up at the bins …….

One of the people that we warned were and English couple, Rob & Sally from Taunton, that had arrived that day in a lovely VW California van and parked up opposite us, Julie went over and spoke to them and they were very appreciative and moved their van round and wound their awning in.  The next day they thanked us and couldn’t believe the strength of the wind and then we got chatting and it turned out that they too were wind junkies and were into kiting & windsurfing.  Before we left we had a couple of really nice evenings sat around the van with them sharing experiences, kite spots and many stories with a take way pizza one of the nights and a few too many glasses of vino as we just lost track of time and it was too late to cook!!  

We decided to stay one extra day and just have a chill out on the beach watching the kiters and having a leisurely pack down of the van which was nice.   Before we left we said our goodbyes to the guys at the kite centre, Julie in the bread stall, Phil our Irish neighbour & Paul & Miriam the Welsh couple with the Blokarts, Rob & Sally and a few other wind junkies that we had kited with and met along the way.  We really loved La Franqui so it’s definitely a place full of memories and somewhere we will re-visit in the future.

We are now on route to Italy via a visit to my Mum’s, it will be so nice to see her again and tell her all about our adventures so far.

So it’s au revoir for another week.

J&J

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