Foreign Perspectives

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Many people have the view that the south of France is simply somewhere that you go to get a suntan on the beach but there are many other activities here throughout the year.

Whilst many fishermen will call it a day once it gets into October or perhaps November in the UK, in the south of France it’s quite a different picture during the year. This photo was taken in the middle of February with temperatures getting on for 20c which is only disguised by the local habit of wearing Winter clothes when it drops below 30c; those of you from the UK would still be in t-shirts.

It’s a similar story with many of the activities that are considered mainly Summer time persuits in the more northernly areas of Europe. In fact, it’s often too warm to continue with many “Summer” activities when the Summer weather kicks in here. For instance, if your interests are in rambling and cycling then it’s not viable to do those in June or July. This is part of our guide to the Pyrenees.

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Most people think of the south of France as purely a Summer holiday destination but in reality it’s pretty much an all year round one.The July/August period is probably the very worst time to go to the south on holiday. Temperatures are almost always above 30c and frequently clear 40 which makes for a very exhausting time for many activities. In fact, neither walkers nor cyclists attempt to do anything from about mid-July to the end of August.

Even aside from the heat, you’ll find that the traffic is heavier than the roads are geared up for. We’ve given up trying to get down to some of the beach resorts over most of the Summer as we found that we were sitting an hour or more in traffic and then found that we couldn’t park anywhere when we did get to the resort as there’s so little public transport everyone ends up going in their car. On some peak days, even the motorway grinds to a halt as we reported in August.

If you want the heat it’s still there just outside that peak period and pretty much anytime from April to October is t-shirt weather here most of the time. Aside from Easter and during the grape harvest in September the traffic is very light and you’ll find it relatively easy to get accommodation booked too.

The Autumn is a little peculiar here. Due to the heat in the Summer, most places end up looking rather burnt and the grass only starts to grow again in September. That makes for quite an odd time colour-wise. After the grape harvest in late August/early September the vines start to adopt the normal Autumn colours but at the same time pretty much everything else is starting to grow after the weather cools down a little. This stretches out the Autumn period right into January.

Although the cold season runs from around mid January through to the end of February, calling it the “cold season” is quite misleading as many of those days are t-shirt weather. Unlike in more northern areas of Europe, when it’s sunny here, it’s warm regardless of the time of year. Where you need to be careful is with the altitude as even a few hundred metres can mean the difference between warm (hot even) and very cold. For instance, here at Mas Camps we have had one day of snow in the time that we’ve been here yet just 30 minutes or so to the west is the village of St Paul which generally gets proper Winter weather from around January to March. The boundary is very marked and you can find the western edge of the village in snow whilst the eastern edge is in t-shirt weather.

Anyway, why not think of a short break in the south of France right now to escape the cold and storms in the UK?

This is part of our guide to the Pyrenees.

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At the start of the month it’s the French that generally fill the hotels up with their reveillon celebrations. Prices for these can reach as high as EUR 80 for very modest affairs which is mainly down to the French not trusting places with lower prices to do a réveillon meal.The following week, it’s the turn of the Spanish with their Day of the Kings holiday, the equivalent of Christmas for everyone else. In Spain, there are celebrations all over the country and on the day itself (January 6th) Spain is closed so there is quite an influx of Spanish shoppers in France which reverses the normal traffic.

And then usually it’s all quiet until March which makes this period one of the best for house hunters in France.

House hunters in France have been rather thin on the ground over the last year but the numbers seem to be going up with a vengeance as we move into 2007 for a combination of reasons.

Adding to the existing four daily flights from Paris to Perpignan by AirFrance and the Ryanair flight from Stansted, over the last year both FlyBE and BMIBaby have started flying from Birmingham, Manchester and Southampton daily which has obviously increased the number of prospective house hunters considerably and indeed one Cornish couple have just left us after an initial scouting trip and they expect to be back later on in the year for a full scale house hunting visit. Not only that but the Paris to Barcelona highway had the final bottleneck eliminated with the completion of the bridge at Millau just over a year ago and work is progressing quickly on the improvements to the train lines to allow full speed TGV access to Perpignan. So it’s considerably more accessible than it has been but if you’re considering a house hunting trip, do it soon as the prices, whilst still fairly low, are starting to catch up with other more accessible parts of southern France.

Aside from the cheap flights and accommodation at this time of year for house hunters it’s almost perfect because the villages and towns are at their normal level of activity. In many cases, people buy property in coastal resorts or even some cute inland villages having only seen them in the Summer and find that what seemed like a perfect location is almost completely dead even just a little out of season never mind in the Autumn or Winter. Not a problem if you’re only looking for a Summer house in France but many people buy places with a view to retiring here in due course.

So check out the house hunting in January: definitely amongst the best times of the year to see the place as it really is most of the year.

This is part of our guide to the Pyrenees.

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