We booked our year-end skiing vacation in Les Alberts in Vallée de la Clarée in Hautes-Alpes well ahead of time when skiing conditions still (or already) looked very promising (the same place, but not the same apartment, we stayed in December last year and then again in March) . Then France received a warm spell and by the time we got to Hautes-Alpes, the snow was largely gone. We took our skis with us in the hope of a major snowfall, but did not bother to try skiing in lousy conditions, but resorted to hiking instead.

We still had about a week’s worth of vacation days to spend in 2025, so we booked another week in the South before the “skiing” vacation. We had found a couple of interesting natural destination in Occitania, so all left to do was to decide where to stay within a convenient driving distance to them. We ended up in Narbonne in Aude department. We drove to Narbonne in one day, in about seven hours, but split our return drive into two, staying one night on the way in Nyons in  Drôme.

The weather was not particularly favorable during either trip, but not overly bad either. We did see some sun, but days were mostly cloudy or foggy with significant chilly wind (that much about the warm spell).

This first post is about our stay in Narbonne. The next one is  about our brief visit to Nyons and our week in Les Alberts. As these were rather uneventful vacations, there is not much to write about them other than share pictures.

Narbonne, a former Roman port town,  was actually a cool choice. The town itself is pretty, and there is a wonderful market hall, voted the most beautiful in France in 2022, with multiple fishmongers, butchers, bakeries and pastry shops, fruit and vegetable stalls, delis, a couple of Asian stalls, coffee shops, and bars. The food places were either dine-in or take-out. We mostly enjoyed what the fishmongers had to offer.

Narbonne is located by the Canal de la Robine that offers a nice place to run, although the trail by it was still partly work-in-progress. We tried to continue our marathon training program while on vacation but it turned out to be difficult. In Narbonne we managed to squeeze in a couple of runs among hikes and sightseeing since it was easy to find nice routes, but running became increasingly harder in Les Alberts where roads, while conveniently flat, where icy in mornings. And after one of us fell ill (again) we paused the training program altogether and concentrated in hiking. Here is our first run by the Canal de la Robine; it was so nice to run in shorts and t-shirts for a change!

Our first hike took us from Peyriac-de-Mer around Étang-du-Doul. This easy hike started with a relatively steep and long uphill, before descending more gently to the pond level. It also started under the clouds but ended in very welcome warm sunshine.

The very next day we did our long run of the week following the periphery of central Narbonne. The route, or the weather, was not particularly attractive, thus there are no pictures. For our last run of this trip, we drove to Parc de la Campane outside the town. The park was scenic and hilly, but the gloomy weather with chilly gusty wind did not do it justice.

We usually spend the first day of each vacation sightseeing the town we are staying in. This time we tried to plan our activities  around the (good) weather — hikes on sunny days, city sightseeing on cloudy or rainy days — but the strategy did not always work in our favor. However, we had two beautiful days for hiking. I am sure Narbonne also would have been more attractive on a sunny day, but it was beautiful nevertheless.

We finished our city tour visiting the museum Narbo Via, an interesting museum exhibiting Roman archaeology and artifacts.

So, for the final hike of this vacation we drove to the port town of Gruissan to walk around the Étang de Gruissan. It was a lovely, super scenic and easy walk. An the weather was quite summer-like.

This wraps up the first part of the vacation. The following day we drove to Nyons in Drôme department to spend one night there before driving home. After one night at home we drove to Les Alberts in Vallée de la Clarée in Hautes-Alpes department for our second year-end vacation week. À bientôt!