We have had a busy social life here for the last week.
Last night being St Patrick’s Day we celebrated with some Irish neighbours, Barry and Mary, (and a sprinkling of English, French and Americans) and the night before we had been entertained by some English friends, John and Pat, also in the village (with a few Scots for good measure)
John is a bit of a wine buff and he fed us a superb variety of delicious (and mostly local) wines with each course.
(I plan to go down to him with a pencil and paper next week to write down the names.)
In the course of the evening we discovered that some flamingos had decided to make a winter home on one of the beaches just down the road from us.

The following day being Patrick’s Day (and a beautiful sunny spring one) it was against our religion to work so we headed down to find them.
Unfortunately the wine had given us both temporary amnesia and when we came to it we couldn’t remember which beach held the flamingos.
We started off at Les Cabanes de Fleury,not a sign of a flamingo, and the restaurant there where we had planned to have lunch was still closed for the winter. But as we were heading back towards the east we spotted one lone pink bird flying , we thought , to Valras or Vendres Plage.

Vendres Plage was devoid of birds and also of open restaurants so, we some reluctance we headed to Valras, a place we had only previously seen in the height of summer when it is black with tourists.
Valras in winter was a quite delightful revelation having something of the air of a watering spa with all the tatty waterfront shops closed and the more genteel shops and restaurants only open in winter.
We picked at random a pretty restaurant on the prom called the Mira Mar and it turned out to be an extremely good decision.
We both had a Pissaladiere (which was the Plat de Jour for €10.50) which came as a crisp circle of flakey pastry, covered with melted onions and crisp pieces of mackerel and cuttlefish, liberally garnished with fresh thyme and capers- totally delicious.
As a very nice touch were were given a little glass of bitter chocolate ganash with the coffee.
We will be back to the Mira Mar.
After that we made a few desultory attempts to find the flamingos but we never found them.
John and Pat told us later that they are at Serignan Plage, the one we never got to.
So it looks like we will have to head off again (maybe we should include lunch.)