Foreign Perspectives

When we first bought our place here, one of the things that we immediately recognised was that it was an area that wasn’t terribly well known outside France. Not because there wasn’t loads of stuff to see and things to do here but that it was an area of the south of France that was relatively difficult to get to. When we arrived, Ryanair had only been flying into Perpignan for a few years and the bridge on the A75 at Millau hadn’t been completed so it was more than a day of driving to reach here from Paris.

Anyway, we figured that it would be a good idea to build up a tourist guide to the region and that’s what became Pyrenees Themes which we created over the course of around two years travelling around the region.

Roll forward a bit and ’tis now high time that we started updating it which we’re making a start on by revisiting some old places and adding some new ones plus there’ll eventually be a whole lot more information about the various sites and sights that we get around during the update.

As before, we’re starting with the closest places and working out, so we were off to the Hermitage of San Antoine over the weekend. This is an extremely popular location with a number of different activities. The hermitage itself is built right into the rockface as you can see with a small church built into a large cave along with several grottoes with some quite impressive carvings. There’s no entry charge.

You can reach the hermitage from the main car park (the first one you reach from St Paul) or continue on round the corner to the smaller car park which is much closer to the hermitage and leads you down a set of normal steps, through a short tunnel and into the hermitage. From the main car park, it’s a much longer walk along a poorly maintained path; the rocks are VERY slippery so watch your step on this route.

There’s even a gite d’etape as part of the complex (dorm style accommodation).

The Gorges de Galamus surround the hermitage and offer the chance to explore underground caves, walking trails and the like. One thing to avoid is the exit from the main carpark in the direction away from St Paul during busy days as it’s strictly one way for quite a distance and can be completely blocked with cars.

There’s a small gift shop in the main carpark which has quite a range of items but seems to keep fairly short hours. The much smaller gift shop cum café within the hermitage complex confines itself mainly to religous items.

A number of people have pointed this site out as the highlight of the places they’ve seen in the locality.

This is part of our guide to the Pyrenees.

One Response to “The Hermitage of San Antoine and Gorges of Galamus”