Wonderful aromas assail you as you make your way around that area of the eastern French Mediterranean which lies in the shadow of the Pyrenees, including odours from a multitude of ground-hugging flowers whose names you may never learn. But there is one place where all these and many more earthy aromas envelop you in a comparatively small space. It is at the Sunday market at Collioure, a town well-known in art history as the centre made famous by the painters of the early part of the century known as the Fauves.
The heart of the market is in the shade of a score or more magnificent plane trees. As you enter you are struck by a wave of herbal luxury, chiefly from a big stall away at the back. Not only are all the local herbs there, packaged for you if you want by the pound weight under the universally known label of Herbes de Provence, but all sorts of delights from the Far East, powdered, wonderful in their garish colours - shades of red, yellow and green, enough to intoxicate you. Then there are herbs growing in pots against which you are tempted to brush the back of your hand. And everywhere flowers, knee-high to waist-high. There is home-baked bread, some of it the size attributed to that of Lady Gregory's famous bracks which she brought to the Abbey Players.
Fruit in abundance - peaches, nectarines, grapes, figs - and from there you drift into air which is, unexpectedly, all goat-cheesey. Then you see a huge queue at a travelling shop where, behind the glass, are chickens, ducks, rabbits and portions of beef, all ready for the Sunday pot. Fish? Well, anchovies, of which Collioure is described as the capital. Honey in abundance and honey-based products. Outside the tree area runs lines of booths with jewellery, clothes, decorative pottery and bits and pieces. Your senses bombarded by odours and colours, you creep off to lunch and a laze under umbrellas on the beach.
The biggest surprise is to come. A couple of hours later you pass by the scene of action where thousands have tramped. Not a van. Not a table. Not an empty cigarette packet, not an abandoned flower meets the eye. On the perfectly clear surface, three small groups of men are playing boules.