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Salt air and sweet wine
Formerly a fishing port and now an anchorage well known for its warm welcome, Banyuls is home to the sweet wine that bears its name. But it is much more than that, and holds many more secrets to be discovered.
It has three landmarks that are almost perfectly aligned on the 42°29’N line of latitude: the northern marker buoy of the Cerbère-Banyuls marine reserve, the ‘Centre Héliomarin’ health centre on the first bay to the north of the port and the ‘Tour Madloc’ at an altitude of 656 m on the summit of the Albères massif.
If you’re south of the buoy, you are not allowed to go above 8 knots, and fishing is prohibited. Don’t miss the opportunity to explore this reserve with one of the local diving clubs. You only want to visit the ‘Centre Héliomarin’, which holds prime position on a beachfront, if you have health problems. And the ‘Tour Madloc’ is an old watchtower for spotting pirates and enemy ships, built in 1285. If there was trouble, it sent a warning to its two neighbouring towers – the ‘Tour Massane’ to the north-east and the ‘Tour Carroig’, now no more, to the south-east – via a beacon system (flames in the night, smoke in the day).
A TROPHY AND AN AQUARIUM
Like the other ports along this coast, Banyuls is not protected against the sea on its eastern and north-eastern sides. Getting into the harbour is a bit t
ricky in a strong southerly breeze, and if you mess up, you’re better off surfing in to the beach rather than ending up dumped on the pebbles which lurk behind the green light. But once you’re in, it’s a great little harbour and a top-class port of call. Banyuls won the trophy for the best Mediterranean yacht-stop at the Paris boat fair in 2008. Worth a visit, you could say!
The amateur sailor can use two other high-profile landmarks to plot his way in - the archways that support the coast road on the northern side of the port, and on the south side, the big white building of the Arago laboratory at 'Université Pierre et Marie Curie', home to a number of laboratories, both public and private. That’s the way you need to head to get to the harbour authority offices and, once you’ve landed, to the beautiful aquarium next door. If you’re not a diver and you want to stay dry, at the very least you need to have a look at their collection, which holds over 200 species of fish and invertebrates.
THE CHAPEL AND COCK’S FEET
Another place of interest that you will see is a little chapel built on a hill almost in line with the port. The ‘Chapelle de la Salette’ takes its name from ‘Notre Dame de la Salette’, in the Alps. There is a fascinating tale behind this strange name, almost worthy of a fairy-tale… “Once upon a time there was a rich landowner, Baron Reig, who was unable to have children. A very pi
ous man, he went to pray every year at the ‘Sanctuaire de la Salette’ in Isère. But these journeys became too much for him, so he had a chapel with the samename built above Banyuls. When he died, he gave his vines to the communes where they were situated, on condition that the poor be allowed to work them and that each year a pilgrimage from Banyuls to the chapel should be made. The pilgrimage still takes place to this day in June.
Everywhere the landscape is marked by the geometrical rows of vines and ‘peus de gall’, drainage channels in the shape of cock’s feet, which stop the good shaly Banyuls earth from heading out to sea with the first storm.
And wherever you look, vines roll down the slopes to the sea, between the brown and red rocks, turning blue into green, mineral into vegetable, water into wine and salt air into sugar.
DYNAMITE AND ECOLOGY
If you head north out of the port, make sure you stop off near the ‘Cap Béar’ at Paulilles bay, a interesting mix of lowlands and rocks, with two beaches (a rare thing for a bay like this), and an interesting history. After the French defeat in 1870, French politician Léon Gambetta decided to build a gunpowder factory “as far away as possible from the Prussian border”. The Paulilles site was chosen, because it had t
he freshwater necessary for processing nitro-glycerine (Alfred Nobel's manufacturing process). It was isolated, which kept the local population safe if anything should go wrong. A loading quay was built and the factory was built on the small area of flat ground. Four hundred people worked there, and in 1960, it produced 20 tonnes of dynamite a day.
But then the dynamite market went and imploded. In 1984 the site was closed. In 1989, the promoter Jean-Claude Méry bought it with the idea of setting up a marina as part of a port with 500 moorings. But there was public outcry, and petitions, protests and lobbying ensued. Finally the ‘Conservatoire du Littoral’ bought the site with the help of the local authorities, to turn it into a conservation area. The buildings, gardens and coastline have been restored in a simple style and they now host tourists, a Catalan fishing boat restoration workshop and a museum.
Mooring is allowed in the bay, and we recommend it highly.
