37,2 le matin

Actually, it wasn't anywhere near 37C -- more like 10C, with a stiff wind blowing off the Pyrenees. Jean-Jacques Beneix's 1986 film 37,2 le matin is known as Betty Blue in English. It's very well known around here because part of it was set on Gruissan's iconic Plage des Chalets -- so called because it is lined with chalets, over 1,000 of them in ten rows. The oldest ones are wooden and built on stilts, with the space underneath the living area on the first floor generally fenced in and used for storage -- they are so close to the beach that in rough weather they can be flooded. New ones, further from the beach, are just conventional houses in a chalet style.

The chalets are a blipper's paradise -- I wandered around oblivious to the cold, snapping away, while S retreated to the car to keep warm. Then we went into the old part of the village for a coffee in the Café de la Paix.

On the way home, the sky was incredibly dramatic, blue sky on one side and a tumble of dark storm clouds on the other. By the time we got to Lézignan the sky over the Minervois looked as if the end of the world was nigh, yet we could see that on the coast there was still blue sky and fluffy white clouds. We hurried round the supermarket and got home just ahead of the rain. And now the sky is clear again. Crazy weather.

My nearly blip of the beach is here . I made a Flickr set of some of my other chalet photos.

Edit: other people's beach hut blipsnaps here and here