Lunch out and a walk on the garrigue at Leucate

Once our restaurant terraces opened again, and we'd had our second jabs, we decided it was time to brave it and go out and be 'normal' again! We chose a good day for the weather and off we set to a restaurant at La Franqui called "Le Bleu". We sat in the shade of the terrace beside the beach and the sea. It was bliss!

Keith chose the burger 'facon fish and chips' which he loved; he said the fish batter was perfect. It was served with a home made tartare sauce. I had the Thai green curry with prawns. They warned me it was hot, but French hot is usually our mild. However this was quite hot! I thought four prawns were a bit measly, but really with the rice it was very filling and I couldn't finish it all. As we were planning a walk after I forwent a dessert.

We drove around to the Leucate lighthouse which is perched up on a cliff close to La Franqui. There were still plenty of wildflowers and many butterflies, but mostly the two species that I managed to photograph, as follows.

This is a Western Marbled White (Melanargia occitanica). At home we are only seeing the regular Marbled White, so it's nice to see a different species. Not a lifer as I have seen them many times, but have never got a photo to confirm that I have the different species.

Showing a view of the habitat we were walking around in.

This is the other species that was abundant, in fact there were absolutely tons of them. They were all on the same plant which I later found out was Felty Germander (Teucrium polium). It had a lovely herby smell to it and is indeed used in cooking, and medicine. The butterfly is a Dusky Heath (Coenonympha dorus) and they fly low to the ground always perching with their wings closed. They are mostly to be found in Spain and the south of France into parts of Italy, and love this kind of habitat, hot rocky dusty places.

There are quite a few ruined stone buildings on the clifftop area and masses of dry stone walls too.

A view of the semaphore station, which being a military place was all fenced off from the public area.

Luckily for us, there were several Woodchat Shrikes (Lanius senator) flying around and perching on the fences! We also had a really great close up view of a Sardinian Warbler, but no time to get a photo. We also saw a Thekla Lark, making our birding fairly interesting, despite the majority of birds hiding away from the afternoon sun. 

Me by the lighthouse and the posh restaurant with a Michelin star. No, we havent been there. Michelin starred restaurants don't appeal to me.

The highlight of the day came right at the end. As we were putting our things back in the car, K suddenly called to me quietly and indicated with his hand to come and look! There, on the car parked next to ours, was a Two-tailed Pasha (Charaxes jasius)!! I had always wanted to see one of these large beauties, so another tick off the butterfly wish list!

By the way, anyone who gets my blog via email, they seem to be going into the spam/junk folder. Just in case anyone looks in who is wondering why I have not blogged for a while. I don't know myself how to do it, but apparently you can tell your computer that my blog posts are not spam and should go into your inbox!