Harvest

Meteo France has been issuing dire warnings of storms and severe temperature drops on Wednesday. So we thought we'd better take advantage of the last days of sunshine by going to the seaside. After a morning's work the restaurant at the salt pans in Gruissan seemed like a good plan. The lagoons were certainly a contrast to our last visit. The hot weather has meant a bumper crop of salt, and they were harvesting it while we were there.

The restaurant specialises in whole fish cooked in a salt crust, so that's what we had, after starters of grilled oysters (S) and samphire omelette (me). The place was heaving; they have a production line in the kitchen, and they must have served 200 covers. Perhaps inevitably, the food lacked attention to detail; S's fish was overcooked and mine could have been a little bit less done too. Also it was expensive, so not great value for money. 

After lunch, rather than go to the beach we drove further along the road to the fishermen's shacks. We haven't been here for many years and it has changed a bit. There are more shacks, a lot of boats, and most notably a couple of them now sell their catch direct from the boat in the mornings. So we'll be back.

We drove back around the lagoon and through the salt marshes, hoping to see some birds, but only saw a very distant flock of flamingos and a lone heron. There's a small Flickr set of alternative blips right from here.