Journée du patrimoine

See also: random architecture alternative blip.

We decided to go out and visit a historical site as it's the Journées du Patrimoine this weekend. We got off to rather a late start though and didn't get to Gruissan till gone 12 o'clock. So the immediate mission was, find lunch. Gruissan is a popular tourist village and they'd gone full-on for this weekend. The streets were lined with stalls of local crafts, and local authors flogging their books, interspersed with street musicians (blip, how can I resist a reflection in brass?). 

The restaurants were filling up quickly and the ones that weren't full had all their tables reserved. We ended up at a small place specialising in mussels, where we shared a goat's cheese salad and then had mussels in a Thai sauce for me, mussels with Roquefort sauce for S, both served with copious and excellent chips. For dessert we wandered a little way up the street for artisan ice cream.

Finally we made it to our chosen site. Despite being ex-archaeologists and living here for 23 years, we've somehow failed to be aware of a very large Roman site on the Ile St Martin. We got there too late for the 2 pm tour, so had to wait till 3 pm. The guy showing us round was knowledgeable and indefatigable in his explanations, so this tour set off a little late (extra 3). We'd waited alone for the first half hour and the guy said he'd do a private tour for us, but around 5 to 3 a horde of extra people arrived, expanding the group to at least the regulation 25. 

The site is no longer on the coast, but most likely part of the Roman port installations; Narbonne was a major port in Roman times, but since then rivers and coastline have both moved around a lot. There is not a massive amount of standing remains, and surprisingly few finds -- he didn't say so directly, but I think the earliest excavations might have been a bit incompetent. There was enough evidence to suggest there was storage and inspection of goods, supply of fresh water to ships, production of quicklime, and iron-forging on site. As we left the guide was ready to wade in for yet another tour with a newly arrived group.

It was boiling hot on the unshaded site in mid-afternoon, and after the hour-long tour we retreated to the car rather exhausted and decided to go home by the scenic route rather than going to the beach. The beautiful view of Gruissan was being immortalised in an unusual way by a Belgian man with a plate camera (extra 2). Later on we spotted a group of at least 30 storks in a distant field (see the evidence in the fuzzy extra 1).

Back home for a rest, and then I was out again for a face-to-face book group meeting in Irene's garden. Being round a table together certainly beats Zoom calls and it was especially lovely that K was there as we hadn't seen her for close to a year. We discussed Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, which we all really enjoyed.