Sens et des Senteurs is in Aregeles sur Mer Sunday the 8th May. The Chambre d’Agriculture of the Pyrenees Orientale Aromatic and Medicinal herb team have organised a plant and transformed herb market in association with the Tourist board and restaurants of Argeles sur Mer. Alongside the market of local plant and herb transformers they ahve organised a whole series of entertainment for kids, music and the restaurants are doing a wide selection of “world cuisine” which frankly could be anything.

For the first time the Domaine de Montrouch has been invited, so we will give Sens et des Senteurs a go. It is a long way to Argeles, and already I envisage getting hopelessly lost trying to find the centre of town but it seems like a lot of work has goone into organising the event so fingers crossed.

Argeles sur Mer . is the lest big beach resort before the Catalan border, initially developed as a holiday destination for the Northern working class it has since grown enormously, with a Winter population of 10,000 and a Summer population of 150.000. So I am glad to be going in Spring and not at the height of the tourist season. Usually I avoid the coast for markets as most of the accommodation is apartments with few gardens in sight. But Argeles has been working hard to promote a local organic market every Tuesday  with producers from the back country of French Catalonia so hopefully it will pull in folks from the surrounding area.

We shall see, if it works there are three more Sens et des Senteurs markets in the next few months, la Tour de basse Elne, Maury, and Thuir. The latter two sound good, but as I already do the Mercat de la Terra in Elne the first Sunday of every month I may miss the Tour one. The price of diesel is sadly constant factor in working out what to do ad what not to do.