A Mediterranean Dispatch · June 2025

41.5° in the Shade
and Not a Drop to Drink

A tale of friendship, rosé (for others), excellent sausages, and the quiet heroism of the designated driver.

When the météo announces 40°C in Carcassonne, you don’t deliberate. You don’t ponder. You don’t make a pros-and-cons list. You simply look at your guests — Acky and Sylvia, freshly arrived from Germany where, presumably, weather still has manners — and say: “We’re going to the beach.” They agree with the enthusiasm of people who have just understood what they’ve walked into.

“The decision is made in roughly the time it takes a butter croissant to melt on a car bonnet. Which is fast.”

The Great Leucate Gamble

Destination: Port Leucate. Specifically, Biquet Plage — a place with history. A place with baggage. Our last visit, some 12 months ago, was, shall we say, underwhelming. The kind of experience that makes you question your own happy memories. Had it ever really been good? Or had we been younger and more easily pleased by warm rosé and ambient French chaos?

Fingers crossed. Reservations made. Loungers booked. We aim the car southwards at 10am with the air of a small expedition trusting in a compass that once lied to us.

“First beach trip of the year. There is something deliciously ceremonial about this, like the uncorking of summer itself.”

Arrival & The Miracle of Good Taste

We roll in just past 11:30am, claim our loungers like very relaxed conquistadors, and then — a miracle. The music. In years of beach club existence, I have suffered through enough reggaeton, aggressive house, and inexplicable accordion techno to last several lifetimes. But today? Pure 1970s gold. Something in me that has been quietly clenched since 2019 finally unclenches.

A chilled bottle of rosé is ordered. Glasses are filled. Feet meet sand. The Mediterranean glitters. Even the seagulls seem to be enjoying themselves.

“Not for me, of course. I am on a completely dry spell. Also: I am driving. My contribution to aperitif hour is being simultaneously virtuous and slightly smug about it.”

Lina, the Menu & the Return of Excellence

Lina the waitress materialises with charm and menu in hand, guides us through the options with the confident grace of someone who genuinely knows what’s good. And what’s good turns out to be: everything. The food is excellent. Not “beach club” excellent, which is a category that mostly means “acceptable given the sand situation.” Genuinely excellent. Pre-Covid Biquet Plage excellent.

Reader, it’s back. Whatever was lost, found. Whatever standard had slipped, restored. We eat well, we laugh, and then — as tradition demands — the post-lunch digestive nap is observed with great seriousness.

The others drift into the sea. I remain on my lounger, horizontal and philosophical, watching clouds that have the decency to be decorative rather than threatening.

🌊 · 🌊 · 🌊

The Drive Home: A Temperature Thriller

4pm arrives too soon, as beach afternoons always do. We pack up and head north. The car’s dashboard thermometer becomes, for the next 45 minutes, the most suspenseful reading instrument I’ve ever encountered.

28°C Leaving the beach

→

35°C Approaching Narbonne

→

41.5°C Near home

41.5°C. The car informs us of this with the same calm neutrality with which it might report that we need fuel. The digits sit there, cheerful and monstrous. Germany, as represented by Acky and Sylvia, goes very quiet.

Pool, Plancha & Rhum Arrangé

We pile through the front door, blast the air conditioning into operation, and throw ourselves into the pool — where the water, bless it, is hovering around 30°C. Refreshing the way a warm hug is refreshing. Comforting. Not exactly cool, but it beats standing on the terrace.

Aperitif hour follows naturally, as it does in the south of France because the south of France has decided that there shall always be aperitif hour, non-negotiable, on the books, constitutionally protected. I man the plancha. Sausages. Meat. The simplicity of a hot grill on a hot evening. And tomatoes — my own homegrown tomatoes, which I mention with the barely suppressed pride of a man who has watched something he planted actually survive.

“There is no tomato in the world that tastes as good as the one you grew yourself. This is a scientific fact. I will not be taking questions.”

The night winds down with night caps: Rhum Arrangé, home-made, built on rum from Guadeloupe and vanilla pods personally sourced on the island of Taha’a. This last detail is delivered with the precision of a man who wants it clearly understood that this rum has provenance. The guests are impressed. They should be.

By 11pm, everyone has retired. Satisfied. Slightly sun-dazed. Happy.

Except me. I am still awake at 3am, having found, as one does, that M*A*S*H is still one of the finest things ever put on television, and that several episodes in a row is not a problem but rather a perfectly rational life choice. Hawkeye would understand. He’d probably pour himself a martini about it.

Final Verdict

A good hot day. Great friends. Biquet Plage redeemed. Rosé enjoyed vicariously. Sober driving rewarded with the moral high ground and excellent tomatoes. And somewhere between the sand, the plancha smoke, and the Rhum Arrangé, the particular alchemy of southern French summer did its thing: it turned an ordinary Tuesday into something worth writing about.

Until the next heatwave. 🌞

Written with sunscreen in the eyes · Carcassonne & Surrounds

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