A day out in Gruissan

I'm going back to September and the first trip out with my brother, to Gruissan on the coast near Narbonne. We have driven through many times but have never stopped to explore this pretty little village with a 10th century tower keeping guard over it all.

The 'Tour Barberousse' (Redbeard Tower) is the only remnant of a 10th C. castle built to keep a look out over the sea and lagoons and guard against invasions headed towards Narbonne. It was enlarged in the 12th Century but unfortunately ordered to be dismantled by Richelieu in the 16thC and has been left neglected ever since. For tourists and photographers however, it provides a wonderful view in all directions from Gruissan over the lagoons, salt pans, mountains and the ocean!

After a delicious lunch we headed up to the tower, which wasn't such a climb really, apart from some steep steps in the rock which my pathetically weak legs would have had a problem with if it hadn't been for the railings to hold onto!

Hmmm, so it was only half a tower! 😀

View towards the marina, and beyond, the salt pans, the working ones of which are pink coloured.

Lagoon on the left, and ocean in the far distance.

Looking inland at the start of the Canal de Sainte Marie. This lagoon (the Etang de Gruissan) in the foreground often has flamingos in the summer, but there weren't any this time. My brother hadn't seen flamingos in the wild, so we were hoping to see some (we did, on a later trip!).

Random photographer at the top of the hill. 😀

Back down in the town, we headed for the salt pans to visit the Salin de l'Ile Saint Martin, which has guided tours for those who are interested, a restaurant beside the pink salt pans, and a fabulous shop selling amongst other gastronomic things, a lot of sea salt! The best thing about it, was the help yourself flavoured salt counter, where there were about 30 different salts all flavoured with very interesting things. 

It's like pick and mix sweeties, you take a bag, scoop out as much salt as you want, then put it in the bag and seal it up with a sticker which reminds you which flavour you chose. I picked rosemary salt (looking forward to covering roast potatoes with that!), bay leaf salt, which I thought would go very well with fish, and mild chilli salt and cumin salt (both perfect for Indian raitas and Tex-Mex salsas). 

There are salt pans galore along the coast in the Aude department but not all are in current use. Those are the ones that wading birds tend to use and are not pink. I'm not sure if they come and feed in these pink salt pans, because I don't really fancy salt flavoured with bird poo 😀😂😀, but it's the algae in these waters that are the reason that some flamingos are pink! As juveniles the ones that live around here are white and grey/brown, but become more pink as they age. That's because they eat both the algae in the waters, and the small shrimp that feed on the algae, both of which contain carotenoid pigments.

Below is quite a small mound of salt compared to some of the salt works along the coast!

The water was very thick and lumpy, I am guessing it was the salt forming. I rather liked the fish skeleton art in the pool, don't you? 😀

As we left Gruissan and headed inland, a flock of large birds flew in front of us and landed in a field next to the road. Luckily there was somewhere to pull over, because they were White Stork (Ciconia ciconia), presumably stopping for a quick feed on their migration route. 

Thousands of White Stork are seen migrating in the autumn by the LPO watchers on a nearby hill called the Roc de Conilhac. We did actually stop up there afterwards and had a chat with the migration watchers. They have a board listing the birds seen flying overhead and how many. We were actually there on a day with a NW wind which is the ideal bird spotting conditions (as the wind keeps the birds in a narrow area as they don't want to cross over the water so hug the coast flying southwards), but nope, nothing in the sky at that time! It's a breezy old place and only one large bush for shelter against hot sun or cold wind but these people volunteer to watch for birds for several months during the autumn. In the spring they also watch for migrating birds, but in a different location, at Leucate cliffs.

Nothing to do with our day out, but I have had this photo sitting about since August wanting to post it, so it's going here! This is a Glanville Fritillary (Melitaea cinxia) and it was resting on the wall of the house just near the garage. It didn't move all the time I was taking photos, and I was very close, so I can only guess it was ether very tired or had just recently eclosed, which is the best time to take macros of butterflies (having seen how flitty a Swallowtail is normally compared to the ones I raised when I first put them outside and they just sat still). 😀

Our family visitors are leaving shortly to head up into the high mountains before the snow comes, so I should be able to catch up a bit more soon!